HISTORY  OF  THE 
^WARFARE  OF  SCI- 
ENCE WITH  THEOLOGY 
IN  CHRISTENDOMS 


ANDREW  D.WHITE 


BL  245  .W54  v. 2 

White,  Andrew  Dickson,  1832 

1918. 
A  history  of  the  warfare  of 

science  with  theology  in 

•  y  i  » 

V.  2- 


A   HISTORY   OF 

THE   WARFARE   OF   SCIENCE 

WITH  THEOLOGY 

IN   CHRISTENDOM 


BY 


ANDREW    DICKSON'  WHITE 

LL.  D.  (Yale),   L.  H.  D.  (Columbia),   Ph.  Dr.  (Jena) 

LATE    PRESIDENT    AND    PROFESSOR    OF    HISTORY    AT    CORNELL    UNIVERSITY 


IN   TWO    VOLUMES 
VOL.    II 


NEW     YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

1896 


Copyright,  1896, 
By   D.  APPLETON   AND   COMPANY. 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   SECOND   VOLUME. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

FROM   MIRACLES  TO   MEDICINE. 

f.    The  Early  and  Sacred  Theories  of  Disease. 

Naturalness  of  the  idea  of  supernatural  intervention  in  causing  and  cur- 
ing disease  ...••••• 
Prevalence  of  this  idea  in  ancient  civilizations  . 
Beginnings  of  a  scientific  theory  of  medicine     . 
The  twofold  influence  of  Christianity  on  the  healing  art  . 

II.  Growth  of  Legends  of  Healing.—  The  Life  of  Xavier  as  a  Typical  Example 
Growth  of  legends  of  miracles  about  the  lives  of  great  benefactors  of 
humanity    ...•••••■•• 

Sketch  of  Xavier's  career 

Absence  of  miraculous  accounts  in  his  writings  and  those  of  his  contem- 


poraries      .....••■••• 
Direct  evidence  that  Xavier  wrought  no  miracles      . 
Growth  of  legends  of  miracles  as  shown  in  the  early  biographies  of  him 

As  shown  in  the  canonization  proceedings 

As  shown  in  the  later  biographies 

Naturalness  of  these  legends 


i 
i.  2 


3.4 


5 
5,6 


6-9 
•  9.  io 
11-14 
M,i5 
15-21 
21,  22 


III.  The  Medieval  Miracles  of  Healing  check  Medical  Science 
Character  of  the  testimony  regarding  miracles  . 
Connection  of  mediaeval  with  pagan  miracles    . 

Their  basis  of  fact 

Various  kinds  of  miraculous  cures     . 

Atmosphere  of  supernaturalism  thrown  about  all  cures 

Influence  of  this  atmosphere  on  medical  science 

IV.  The  Attribution  of  Disease  to  Satanic  Lnfiuence.—"  Pastoral  Medicine" 

holds  back  Scientific  Effoi-t. 

Theological  theory  as  to  the  cause  of  disease 

Influence  of  self-interest  on  "  pastoral  medicine  " 

Development  of  fetichism  at  Cologne  and  elsewhere 
Other  developments  of  fetich  cure     . 


•       23 
24 

24,25 

25,  26 

.       26 

26 


27 
2S 
29 

29,  3° 


IV 


CONTENTS   OF   THE    SECOND   VOLUME. 


V.  Theological  Opposition  to  Anatomical  Studies.  page 

Mediaeval  belief  in  the  unlawfulness  of  meddling  with  the  bodies  of  the  dead  31 
Dissection  objected  to  on  the  ground  that  "  the  Church  abhors  the  shed- 
ding of  blood  "  ...........  31 

The  decree  of  Boniface  VIII  and  its  results 32 

VI.  New  Beginnings  of  Medical  Science. 

Galen 33 

Scanty  development  of  medical  science  in  the  Church  33 

Among  Jews  and  Mohammedans       .......  33,  34 

Promotion  of  medical  science  by  various  Christian  laymen  of  the  Middle 

Ages 34,35 

By  rare  men  of  science      ..........       35 

By  various  ecclesiastics      .........  35,  36 


VII.  Theological  Discouragement  of  Medicine. 
Opposition  to  seeking  cure  from  disease  by  natural  means 
Requirement  of  ecclesiastical  advice  before  undertaking  medical  treat 

ment  ........... 

Charge  of  magic  and  Mohammedanism  against  men  ofscier.ee 

Effect  of  ecclesiastical  opposition  to  medicine 

The  doctrine  of  signatures 

The  doctrine  of  exorcism  .... 

Theological  opposition  to  surgery 
Development  of  miracle  and  fetich  cures  . 
Fashion  in  pious  cures       .... 

Medicinal  properties  of  sacred  places 
Theological  argument  in  favour  of  miraculous 
Prejudice  against  Jewish  physicians  . 

VIII.  Fetich  Cures  under  Protestantism. —  The  Royal  Touch. 
Luther's  theory  of  disease 
The  royal  touch  .... 
Cures  wrought  by  Charles  II     . 
By  James  II      .... 
By  William  III 
By  Queen  Anne          .... 

By  Louis  XIV 

Universal  acceptance  of  these  miracles 


37 

37 
3S 
38 

38,39 
39 
40 

40,41 
42 
42 
43 
44 


45,46 
46 

47 
47 


48 
4S 

49 


IX.  The  Scientific  Struggle  for  Anatomy. 

Occasional  encouragement  of  medical  science  in  the  Middle  Ages   .  49,  50 

New  impulse  given  by  the  revival  of  learning  and  the  age  of  discovery    .       50 
Paracelsus  and  Mundinus.         .........        50 

Vesalius,  the  founder  of  the  modern  science  of  anatomy. — His  career  and 

fate 50-55 

X.  Theological  Opposition  to  Inoculation,  Vaccination,  and  the  Use  of  Anes- 

thetics. 
Theological  opposition  to  inoculation  in  Europe       .         .         .         .  55,  56 

In  America        ...........  56,  57 


CONTENTS   OF   THE    SECOND   VOLUME. 


Theological  opposition  to  vaccination 
Recent  hostility  to  vaccination  in  England 
In  Canada,  during  the  smallpox  epidemic 
Theological  opposition  to  the  use  of  cocaine 
To  the  use  of  quinine         .... 
Theological  opposition  to  the  use  of  anaesthetics 


PAGE 

53,59 

•       59 

60,  61 
.       61 

61,  62 

62,  63 


XI.  Final  breaking  away  of  the  Theological  Theory  in  Medicine. 

Changes  incorporated  in  the  American  Book  of  Common  Prayer       .         .  64 
Effect  on  the  theological  view  of  the  growing  knowledge  of  the  relation 

between  imagination  and  medicine 64 

Effect  of  the  discoveries  in  hypnotism 65 

In  bacteriology 65 

Relation  between  ascertained  truth  and  the  "  ages  of  faith  "     .         .         .66 


CHAPTER    XIV. 


FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 


The  Theological  View  of  Epidemics  and  Sanitation. 
The  recurrence  of  great  pestilences  ........       67 

Their  early  ascription  to  the  wrath  or  malice  of  unseen  powers        .  67,  68 

Their  real  cause  want  of  hygienic  precaution 69 

Theological  apotheosis  of  filth 69,  70 

Sanction  given  to  the  sacred  theory  of  pestilence  by  Pope  Gregory  the 

Great 7° 

Modes  of  propitiating  the  higher  powers 71 

Modes  of  thwarting  the  powers  of  evil 72 

Persecution  of  the  Jews  as  Satan's  emissaries 72_74 

Persecution  of  witches  as  Satan's  emissaries 74.  75 

Case  of  the  Untori  at  Milan 75~77 

New  developments  of  fetichism. — The  blood  of  St.  Januarius  at  Naples    78-80 
Appearance  of  better  methods  in  Italy. — In  Spain    .         .         .         .  80,81 


II.   Gradual  Decay  of  Theological  Views  regarding  Sanitation. 

Comparative  freedom  of  England  from  persecutions  for  plague-bringing, 

in  spite  of  her  wretched  sanitary  condition 
Aid  sought  mainly  through  church  services 
Effects  of  the  great  fire  in  London    . 
The  jail  fever    ...... 

The  work  of  John  Howard 

Plagues  in  the  American  colonies 

In  France. — The  great  plague  at  Marseilles 

Persistence  of  the  old  methods  in  Austria 

In  Scotland        ...... 


82 
82,83 

33 
83.  S4 

84 
85 
86 

87 

87,  SS 


III.    The  Triumph  of  Sanitary  Science. 

Difficulty  of  reconciling  the  theological  theory  of  pestilences  with  accu- 
mulating facts 88,  89 

Curious  approaches  to  a  right  theory 89,  90 


PAGE 

go 

90, 

91 

91. 

- 

92. 

M 

13 

>3 

94 

y[  CONTENTS   OF    THE    SECOND   VOLUME. 

The  law  governing  the  relation  of  theology  to  disease 

Recent  victories  of  hygiene  in  all  countries       ..... 

In  England. — Chadwick  and  his  fellows  ...... 

In  France.         ........... 

IV.    The  Relation  of  Sanitary  Science  to  Religion. 

The  progress  of  sanitary  science  not  at  the  cost  of  religion 
Illustration  from  the  policy  of  Napoleon  III  in  France    . 
Effect  of  proper  sanitation  on  epidemics  in  the  United  States  . 
Change  in  the  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  the  cause  and  cure  of  pes- 
tilence           Q4, 95 

CHAPTER    XV. 
FROM   "  DEMONIACAL    POSSESSION  "   TO   INSANITY. 

I.  Theological  Ideas  of  Lunacy  and  its  Treatment. 

The  struggle  for  the  scientific  treatment  of  the  insane  ....  97 
The  primitive  ascription  of  insanity  to  evil  spirits     ....  97,  98 

Better  Greek  and  Roman  theories — madness  a  disease     .         .         .  9S.  99 

The  Christian  Church  accepts  the  demoniacal  theory  of  insanity  .  99-101 
Vet  for  a  time  uses  mild  methods  for  the  insane  ....  101,  102 
Growth  of  the  practice  of  punishing  the  indwelling  demon  .  .  103,104 
Two  sources  whence  better  things  might  have  been  hoped. — The  reasons 

of  their  futility 104,  105 

The  growth  of  exorcism    .........       106-109 

Use  of  whipping  and  torture    ........       109.  no 

The  part  of  art  and  literature  in  making  vivid  to  the  common  mind  the 

idea  of  diabolic  activity 110-112 

The  effects  of  religious  processions  as  a  cure  for  mental  disease      .         .       112 

Exorcism  of  animals  possessed  of  demons 113 

Belief  in  the  transformation  of  human  beings  into  animals  .  .  .114 
The  doctrine  of  demoniacal  possession  in  the  Reformed  Church     .        114,115 

II.  The  Beginnings  of  a  Healthful  Scepticism. 

Rivalry  between  Catholics  and  Protestants  in  the  casting  out  of  devils    .     116 
Increased  belief  in  witchcraft  during  the  period  following  the  Reforma- 
tion      117.  1  if 

Increase  of  insanity  during  the  witch  persecutions    ....      11S,  119 

Attitude  of  physicians  toward  witchcraft  .         .         .         .         .         .         .119 

Religious  hallucinations  of  the  insane        .         .         .         .         .         .         .120 

Theories  as  to  the  modes  of  diabolic  entrance  into  the  possessed  .  .120 
Influence  of  monastic  life  on  the  development  of  insanity  .         .         .     121 

Protests   against    the    theological    view  of  insanity — Wier,    Montaigne, 

Bekker        122. 123 

Last  struggles  of  the  old  superstition         .         .         .         .         .         .         .123 

III.  The  Final  Struggle  and  Victory  of  Science. — Pine  I  and  Tide. 

Influence  of  French  philosophy  on  the  belief  in  demoniacal  possesion  124,  125 
Reactionary  influence  of  John  Wesley       .         .         .         .         .         .         -125 


CONTENTS   OF   THE    SECOND   VOLUME.  vii 

PAGE 

Progress  of  scientific  ideas  in  Prussia 126 

In  Austria I26'  I27 

In  America I27 

In  South  Germany I2S 

General  indifference  toward  the  sufferings  of  madmen      ....     129 

The  beginnings  of  a  more  humane  treatment 13° 

Jean  Baptiste  Pinel I3I 

Improvement   in   the   treatment    of   the    insane    in    England.— William 

Tuke I32-I33 

The  place  of  Pinel  and  Tuke  in  history 134 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

I.    The  Epidemics  of  "  Possession." 

Survival  of  the  belief  in  diabolic  activity  as  the  cause  of  such  epidemics     13  = 

Epidemics  of  hysteria  in  classical  times I3» 

In  the  Middle  Ages 136,137 

The  dancing  mania J37>  l3° 

Inability  of  science  during  the  fifteenth   century  to  cope  with  such  dis- 

•     I3Q 
eases  ...-••••••  JV 

Cases  of  possession  brought  within  the  scope  of  medical  research  during 

the  sixteenth  century x39 

Dying-out  of  this  form  of  mental  disease  in  northern  Europe  .         .         •     139 

In  Italy J4° 

Epidemics  of  hysteria  in  the  convents 140,  141 

The  case  of  Martha  Drossier 14I.  J42 

Revival  in  France  of  belief  in  diabolic  influence T43 

The  Ursulines  of  Loudun  and  Urbain  Grandier        ....      143.  *44 

Possession  among  the  Huguenots x4? 

In  New  England. — The  Salem  witch  persecution     .  I45-154 

At  Paris. — Alleged  miracles  at  the  grave  of  Archdeacon  Paris  .      154-156 

In  Germany. — Case  of  Maria  Renata  Sanger T5" 

More  recent  outbreaks       .         .         .         .         .         •         •         •         •         •I57 

II.  Beginnings  of  Helpful  Scepticism. 

Outbreaks  of  hysteria  in  factories  and  hospitals         ....      157.  T5° 

In  places  of  religious  excitement 158.159 

The  case  at  Morzine 159-162 

Similar  cases  among  Protestants  and  in  Africa io3 

III.  Theological  Suggestions  of  Compromise.— Final    Triumph  of  the   Sci- 

entific View  and  Methods. 
Successful  dealings  of  medical  science  with  mental  diseases      .         .         •     163 
Attempts  to  give  a  scientific  turn  to  the  theory  of  diabolic  agency  in  dis- 

.     164 
ease    ....••••••• 

Last  great  demonstration  of  the  old  belief  in  England  .  •  .165 
Final  triumph  of  science  in  the  latter  half  of  the  present  century  .  165,  166 
Last  echoes  of  the  old  belief 


viii  CONTENTS   OF   THE   SECOND   VOLUME. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

FROM    BABEL   TO    COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

I.  The  Sacred  Theory  in  its  First  Form.  PAGE 

Difference  of  the  history  of  Comparative  Philology  from  that  of  other  sci- 
ences as  regards  the  attitude  of  theologians        .         .         .         .         .168 
Curiosity  of  early  man  regarding  the  origin,  the  primitive  form,  and  the 

diversity  of  language 16S 

The  Hebrew  answer  to  these  questions    ......      169,  170 

The  legend  of  the  Tower  of  Babel    .......      170,171 

The  real  reason    for  the   building  of  towers   by  the   Chaldeans   and   the 

causes  of  their  ruin     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .172 

Other  legends  of  a  confusion  of  tongues    ......      172,173 

Influence  upon  Christendom  of  the  Hebrew  legends         .         .         .         .174 

Lucretius's  theory  of  the  origin  of  language 174 

The  teachings  of  the  Church  fathers  on  this  subject  ....     175 

The  controversy  as  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew  vowel  points         .     176 
Attitude  of  the  reformers  toward  this  question  .         .         .         .  177 

Of  Catholic  scholars. —  Marini 177 

Capellus  and  his  adversaries 177,  178 

The  treatise  of  Danzius 17S,  179 

II.  The  Sacred  Theory  of  Language  in  its  Second  Form. 

Theological  theory  that  Hebrew  was  the  primitive  tongue,  divinely  re- 
vealed                179, 180 

This  theory  supported  by  all  Christian  scholars  until  the  beginning  of  the 

eighteenth  century 1S0-1S7 

Dissent  of  Prideaux  and  Cotton  Mather 187 

Apparent  strength  of  the  sacred  theory  of  language iSS 

III.  Breaking  down  of  the  Theological  View. 

Reason  for  the  Church's  ready  acceptance  of  the  conclusions  of  compara- 
tive philology     .         .  .         .  .         .         .  .         .         .  .     1S9 

Beginnings  of  a  scientific  theory  of  language 189 

Hottinger 189 

Leibnitz 190 

The  collections  of  Catharine  the  Great,  of  Hervas,  and  of  Adelung      190,  191 
Chaotic  period  in  philology  between  Leibnitz  and  the  beginning  of  the 

study  of  Sanskrit         .         .........     191 

Illustration   from  the  successive  editions  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britan- 

nica     ............     192,  193 

IV.  Triumph  of  the  New  Science. 

Effect  of  the  discovery  of  .Sanskrit  on  the  old  theory         .         .         .      193,  194 
Attempts  to  discredit  the  new  learning     .......     194 

General  acceptance  of  the  new  theory       .         .         .         .         .         .      194,  195 

Destruction   of  the  belief  that  all   created   things  were  first  named  by- 
Adam  ...........      195, 196 

Of  the  belief  in  the  divine  origin  of  letters        ......      197 

Attempts  in  England  to  support  the  old  theory  of  language      .         .      198,  199 


CONTENTS   OF    THE    SECOND    VOLUME. 


IX 


PAGE 


s 


Progress  of  philological  science  in  France         .....      ion,  200 

In  Germany 200 

In  Great  Britain 201, 202 

Recent  absurd  attempts  to  prove  Hebrew  the  primitive  tongue        .      202,  203 

V.   Summary. 

Gradual  disappearance  of  the  old  theories  regarding  the  origin  of  speech 

and  writing         ..........      204,  205 

Full  acceptance  of  the  new  theories  by  all  Christian  scholars  .         .      206,  207 
The  result  to  religion,  and  to  the  Bible     .......     208 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

FROM   THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

I.  The  Growth  of  Explanatory  Transformation  Myths. 

Growth  of  myths  to  account   for  remarkable  appearances  in   Nature — 
mountains,  rocks,  curiously  marked  stones,  fossils,  products  of  vol- 
canic action         ..........      209-214 

Myths  of  the  transformation  of  living  beings  into  natural  objects  .  215-219 
Development  of  the  science  of  Comparative  Mythology    .         .         .      219,  220 

II.  Medicev.il  Growth  of  the  Dead  Sea  Legends. 

Description  of  the  Dead  Sea      ........      221,222 

Impression  made  by  its  peculiar  features  on  the  early  dwellers  in  Pales- 
tine    .............     223 

Reasons  for  selecting  the  Dead  Sea  myths  for  study  ....     224 

Naturalness  of  the  growth  of  legend  regarding  the  salt   region  of 

Usdum        ...........      224, 225 

Universal  belief  in  these  legends       ........     226 

Concurrent  testimony  of  early  and  mediaeval  writers,  Jewish  and  Christian, 
respecting  the  existence  of  Lot's  wife  as  a  "  pillar  of  salt,"  and  of  the 
other  wonders  of  the  Dead  Sea  .......      226-233 

Discrepancies  in  the  various   accounts  and   theological  explanations  of 

them  .............     233 

Theological  arguments  respecting  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife  .  .  .  234 
Growth  of  the  legend  in  the  sixteenth  century 234,  235 

III.  Post-Reformation    Culmination  of  the  Dead  Sea  Legends. — Beginnings 

of  a  Healthful  Scepticism. 
Popularization  of  the  older  legends  at  the  Reformation     ....     236 

Growth  of  new  myths  among  scholars        ......      236,  237 

Signs  of  scepticism  among  travellers  near  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century     238 

Effort  of  Quaresmio  to  check  this  tendency 239 

Of  Eugene  Roger       ...........     240 

Of  Wedelius       ............     240 

Influence  of  these  teachings       .........     241 

Renewed  scepticism — the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  .  242,  243 
Efforts  of  Briemle  and  Masius  in  support  of  the  old  myths  .  .  243,  244 
Their  influence.         ...........     245 


x  9     CONTENTS   OF   THE   SECOND   VOLUME. 

PAGE 

The  travels  of  Mariti  and  of  Volney 246 

Influence  of  scientific  thought  on  the  Dead  Sea  legends  during  the  eight- 
eenth century 246, 247 

Reactionary  efforts  of  Chateaubriand         .......     247 

Investigations  of  the  naturalist  Seetzen      ......      248,  249 

Of  Dr.  Robinson 249,  250 

The  expedition  of  Lieutenant  Lynch 250-252 

The  investigations  of  De  Saulcy 252,  253 

Of  the  Due  de  Luynes. — Lartet's  report 253 

Summary  of  the  investigations  of  the  nineteenth  century. — Ritter's  ver- 
dict           254-256 

IV.    Theological  Efforts  at  Compromise. —  Triumph  of  the  Scientific  Viezu. 

Attempts  to  reconcile  scientific  facts  with  the  Dead  Sea  legends      .      256,  257 
Van  de  Velde's  investigations  of  the  Dead  Sea  region       ....     257 

Canon  Tristram's        ...........     258 

Mgr.  Mislin's  protests  against  the  growing  rationalism      ....     258 

The  work  of  Schaff  and  Osborn         ........     259 

Acceptance  of  the  scientific  view  by  leaders  in  the  Church        .         .      259,  260 

Dr.  Geikie's  ascription  of  the  myths  to  the  Arabs 261 

Mgr.  Haussmann  de  Wandelburg  and  his  rejection  of  the  scientific  view     262 
Service  of  theologians  to  religion  in  accepting  the  conclusions  of  science 

in  this  field 263 


CHAPTER    XIX. 


FROM    LEVITICUS    TO    POLITICAL    ECONOMY. 

I.   Origin  and  Progress  of  Hostility  to  Loans  at  Interest. 

Universal  belief  in  the  sin  of  loaning  money  at  interest    . 
The  taking  of  interest  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans 
Opposition  of  leaders  of  thought,  especially  Aristotle 
Condemnation  of  the  practice  by  the  Old  and  New  Testament! 
By  the  Church  fathers        ....... 

In  ecclesiastical  and  secular  legislation     .... 

Exception  sometimes  made  in  behalf  of  the  Jews 
Hostility  of  the  pulpit        ....... 

Of  the  canon  law        ........ 

Evil  results  of  the  prohibition  of  loans  at  interest     . 
Efforts  to  induce  the  Church  to  change  her  position 
Theological  evasions  of  the  rule        ..... 

Attitude  of  the  Reformers  toward  the  taking  of  interest   . 
Struggle  in  England  for  recognition  of  the  right  to  accept  interest 
Invention  of  a  distinction  between  usury  and  interest 


.     264 
.     264 

•  265 

•  265 
.      266 

266-268 

.      268 

.      268 

.     269 

269,  270 

270, 271 

.     272 

272, 273 

274, 275 

■     275 


II.  Retreat  of  the  Church,  Protestant  and  Catholic. 
Sir  Robert  Filmer's  attack  on  the  old  doctrine 
Retreat  of  the  Protestant  Church  in  Holland  . 
In  Germany  and  America.         . 


276 
276 

277 


CONTENTS   OF    THE    SECOND   VOLUME. 


XI 


Difficulties  in  the  way  of  compromise  in  the  Catholic  Church  . 

Failure  of  such  attempts  in  France 

Theoretical  condemnation  of  usury  in  Italy       .... 

Disregard  of  all  restrictions  in  practice 

Attempts  of  Escobar  and  Liguori  to  reconcile  the  taking  of  interest 

the  teachings  of  the  Church 

Montesquieu's  attack  on  the  old  theory 

Encyclical  of  Benedict  XIV  permitting  the  taking  of  interest  . 
Similar  decision  of  the  Inquisition  at  Rome       .... 

Final  retreat  of  the  Catholic  Church 

Curious  dealings  of  theology  with  public  economy  in  other  fields 


PAGE 

277,278 

278 

279 

2tO 


with 


28 


280 
281 
283 
283 

284 
285-287 


CHAPTER   XX. 
FROM   THE   DIVINE   ORACLES  TO   THE   HIGHER   CRITICISM. 

I.    The  Older  Interpretation. 

Character  of  the  great  sacred  books  of  the  world 28S 

General  laws  governing  the  development  and  influence  of  sacred  litera- 
ture.— The  law  of  its  origin        ........     288 

Legends  concerning  the  Septuagint 289,  290 

The  law  of  wills  and  causes 290 

The  law  of  inerrancy 291 

s —    Hostility  to  the  revision  of  King  James's  translation  of  the  Bible     .         .     291 

The  law  of  unity 292 

Working  of  these  laws  seen  in  the  great  rabbinical  schools       .  .      292,  293 

•  293 
.     294 

...  -295 

.     296 

•  297 
.     298 

298,  299 
.     300 
.     301 
Bede. — Savonarola    ...........     3°2 

Methods  of  modern  criticism  for  the  first  time  employed  by  Lorenzo  Valla     303 

Erasmus 303-305 

Influence  of  the  Reformation  on  the  belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  sacred 

books. — Luther  and  Melanchthon 3°5-3°7 

Development  of  scholasticism  in  the  Reformed  Church    . 

Catholic  belief  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Vulgate         .... 

Opposition  in  Russia  to  the  revision  of  the  Slavonic  Scriptures 

Sir  Isaac  Newton  as  a  commentator  ...... 

—    Scriptural  interpretation  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century 


The  law  of  allegorical  interpretation  . 

Philo  Judseus     .......... 

Justin  Martyr  and  Clement  of  Alexandria         .         .         .         . 

Occult  significance  of  numbers 

Origen        ........... 

Hilary  of  Poitiers  and  Jerome 

Augustine  ........... 

Gregory  the  Great 

Vain  attempts  to  check  the  flood  of  allegorical  interpretations 


308 

309 
310 
311 


II.  Beginnings  of  Scientific  Interpretation. 
—    Theological  beliefs  regarding  the  Pentateuch 
. The  book  of  Genesis  .... 


3" 
312 


Xlj  CONTENTS   OF   THE   SECOND   VOLUME. 

PAGE 

Doubt  thrown  on  the  sacred  theory  by  Aben  Ezra 313 

By  Carlstadt  and  Maes 313 

Influence  of  the  discovery  that  the  Isidorian  Decretals  were  forgeries      .     314 
That    the    writings    ascribed    to    Dionysius    the    Areopagite    were    spu- 
rious        315, 316 

Hobbes  and  La  Peyrere    . 317 

Spinoza     ............      317, 318 

Progress  of  biblical  criticism  in  France. — Richard  Simon  .         .      319,320 

Le  Clerc 320,  321 

Bishop  Lowth   ............     322 

Astruc 322, 323 

Eichhorn's  application  of  the  "higher  criticism"  to  biblical  research       .     323 
Isenbiehl  .............     324 

Herder 325,  326 

Alexander  Geddes     ...........     326 

Opposition  to  the  higher  criticism  in  Germany  ....      327,  328 

Hupfeld 32S 

Vatke  and  Reuss 329 

Kuenen     ............      330,  331 

Wellhausen       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  331, 332 

III.  The  Continued  Growth  of  Scientific  Interpretation. 

Progress  of  the  higher  criticism  in  Germany  and  Holland         .         .         .     333 
Opposition  to  it  in  England      .....  ...      333, 334 

At  the  University  of  Oxford      .........     335 

Pusey         .............     336 

Bentley 337.  338 

Wolf 339 

Niebuhr  and  Arnold  ..........     339 

Milman      .............     340 

Thirlwall  and  Grote  ...........     341 

The  publication  of  Essays  and  Reviews,  and  the  storm  raised  by  the 

book 342-348 

IV.  The  Closing  Struggle. 

Colenso's  work  on  the  Pentateuch     .......      349,  350 

The  persecution  of  him      .........      350-353 

Bishop  Wilberforce's  part  in  it 354.355 

Dean  Stanley's  ............     355 

Bishop  Thirlwall's 356 

Results  of  Colenso's  work  ........      356,  357 

Sanday's  Bampton  Lectures       .........     357 

Keble  College  and  Lux  Mundi 358,359 

Progress  of  biblical  criticism  among  the  dissenters 300 

In  France. — Renan   .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .      360-362 

In  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  .......      362,  363 

The  encyclical  letter  of  Pope  Leo  XIII 364-366 

In  America. — Theodore  Parker .      366,  367 

Apparent  strength  of  the  old  theory  of  inspiration    ....      368,  369 
Real  strength  of  the  new  movement 370 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   SECOND   VOLUME.  xiii 

V.  Victory  of  the  Scientific  and  Literary  Methods.  '  pace 

Confirmation   of  the   conclusions  of  the  higher   criticism  by  Assyriology 

and  Egyptology 37°-37° 

Light   thrown   upon    Hebrew   religion   by   the   translation   of  the  sacred 

books  of  the  East •     377 

The  influence  of  Persian  thought.— The  work  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Mills  .  378 
The  influence  of  Indian   thought.— Light   thrown   by  the  study  of  Brah- 

manism  and  Buddhism 37') 

The  work  of  Fathers  Hue  and  Gabet 379.  3^o 

Discovery    that    Buddha    himself   had    been    canonized    as    a    Christian 

saint 381-383 

Similarity  between  the  ideas  and  legends  of  Buddhism  and  those  of  Chris- 
tianity          383>384 

The  application  of  the  higher  criticism  to  the  New  Testament  .         .     385 

The  English  "Revised  Version"  of  1E81 386,387 

Studies  on  the  formation  of  the  canon  of  Scripture 388 

Recognition  of  the  laws  governing  its  development 389 

Change  in  the  spirit  of  the  controversy  over  the  higher  criticism       .      39°-392 

VI.  Reconstructive  Force  of  Scientific  Criticism. 

Development  of  a  scientific  atmosphere  during  the  last  three  centuries  .  393 
Action  of  modern  science  in  reconstruction  of  religious  truth  .  .  393,  394 
Change  wrought  by  it  in  the  conception  of  a  sacred  literature  .  .     394 

Of  the  Divine  Power.— Of  man.— Of  the  world  at  large  .  .  .  -395 
Of  our  Bible 395, 39^ 


THE  WARFARE   OF  SCIENCE 

WITH   THEOLOGY. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

FROM  MIRACLES    TO   MEDICINE. 

I.    THE    EARLY   AND   SACRED   THEORIES   OF    DISEASE. 

Nothing  in  the  evolution  of  human  thought  appears 
more  inevitable  than  the  idea  of  supernatural  intervention  in 
producing  and  curing  disease.  The  causes  of  disease  are  so 
intricate  that  they  are  reached  only  after  ages  of  scientific 
labour.  In  those  periods  when  man  sees  everywhere  miracle 
and  nowhere  law, — when  he  attributes  all  things  which  he 
can  not  understand  to  a  will  like  his  own, — he  naturally 
ascribes  his  diseases  either  to  the  wrath  of  a  good  being  or 
to  the  malice  of  an  evil  being. 

This  idea  underlies  the  connection  of  the  priestly  class 
with  the  healing  art :  a  connection  of  which  we  have  survi- 
vals among  rude  tribes  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  which 
is  seen  in  nearly  every  ancient  civilization — especially  in 
the  powers  over  disease  claimed  in  Egypt  by  the  priests  of 
Osiris  and  Isis,  in  Assyria  by  the  priests  of  Gibil,  in  Greece 
by  the  priests  of  ^-Esculapius,  and  in  Judea  by  the  priests  and 
prophets  of  Jahveh. 

In  Egypt  there  is  evidence,  reaching  back  to  a  very  early 
period,  that  the  sick  were  often  regarded  as  afflicted  or  pos- 
sessed by  demons  ;  the  same  belief  comes  constantly  before 
us  in  the  great  religions  of  India  and  China  ;  and,  as  regards 
Chaldea,  the  Assyrian  tablets  recovered  in  recent  years, 
while  revealing  the  source  of  so  many  myths  and  legends 
transmitted  to  the  modern  world  through  the  book  of  Gene- 
29  1 


2  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

sis,  show  especially  this  idea  of  the  healing  of  diseases  by  the 
casting  out  of  devils.     A  similar  theory  was  elaborated  in 
Persia.     Naturally,  then,  the  Old  Testament,  so  precious  in 
showing  the  evolution  of  religious  and  moral  truth  among 
men,  attributes  such  diseases  as  the  leprosy  of  Miriam  and 
Uzziah,  the    boils   of  Job,   the    dysentery   of   Jehoram,    the 
withered   hand  of  Jeroboam,   the  fatal   illness  of  Asa,  and 
many  other  ills,  to  the  wrath  of  God  or  the  malice  of  Satan ; 
while,  in  the  New  Testament,  such  examples  as  the  woman 
"  bound  by  Satan,"  the  rebuke  of  the  fever,  the  casting  out 
of  the   devil  which  was    dumb,  the  healing  of  the  person 
whom  "  the  devil  ofttimes  casteth  into  the  fire  "—of  which 
case  one  of  the  greatest  modern  physicians  remarks  that 
never  was  there  a  truer  description  of  epilepsy — and  various 
other  episodes,  show  this  same  inevitable  mode  of  thought 
as  a  refracting  medium  through   which  the  teachings  and 
doings  of  the  Great  Physician  were  revealed  to  future  gen- 
erations. 

In  Greece,  though  this  idea  of  an  occult  evil  agency  in 
producing  bodily  ills  appeared  at  an  early  period,  there 
also  came  the  first  beginnings,  so  far  as  we  know,  of  a  really 
scientific  theory  of  medicine.  Five  hundred  years  before 
Christ,  in  the  bloom  period  of  thought— the  period  of  JEschy- 
lus,  Phidias,  Pericles,  Socrates,  and  Plato— appeared  Hip- 
pocrates, one  of  the  greatest  names  in  history.  Quietly  but 
thoroughly  he  broke  away  from  the  old  tradition,  developed 
scientific  thought,  and  laid  the  foundations  of  medical  science 
upon  experience,  observation,  and  reason  so  deeply  and 
broadly  that  his  teaching  remains  to  this  hour  among  the 
most  precious  possessions  of  our  race. 

His  thought  was  passed  on  to  the  School  of  Alexandria, 
and  there  medical  science  was  developed  yet  further,  espe- 
cially by  such  men  as  Herophilus  and  Erasistratus.  Under 
their  lead  studies  in  human  anatomy  began  by  dissection ; 
the  old  prejudice  which  had  weighed  so  long  upon  science, 
preventing  that  method  of  anatomical  investigation  without 
which  there  can  be  no  real  results,  was  cast  aside  apparently 
forever.* 

*  For  extended  statements  regarding  medicine  in   Egypt,  Judea,  and  Eastern 
nations  generally,   see  Sprengel,  Ilistoire  de  la  MJdecine,   and    Haeser  ;    and  for 


THE    EARLY   AND   SACRED    THEORIES   OF   DISEASE.  3 

But  with  the  coming  in  of  Christianity  a  great  new  chain 
of  events  was  set  in  motion  which  modified  this  development 
most  profoundly.  The  influence  of  Christianity  on  the  heal- 
ing art  was  twofold  :  there  was  first  a  blessed  impulse — the 
thought,  aspiration,  example,  ideals,  and  spirit  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  This  spirit,  then  poured  into  the  world,  flowed 
down  through  the  ages,  promoting  self-sacrifice  for  the  sick 
and  wretched.  Through  all  those  succeeding  centuries, 
even  through  the  rudest,  hospitals  and  infirmaries  sprang  up 
along  this  blessed  stream.  Of  these  were  the  Eastern  estab- 
lishments for  the  cure  of  the  sick  at  the  earliest  Christian 
periods,  the  Infirmary  of  Monte  Cassino  and  the  Hotel-Dieu 
at  Lyons  in  the  sixth  century,  the  Hotel-Dieu  at  Paris  in 
the  seventh,  and  the  myriad  refuges  for  the  sick  and  suffer- 
ing which  sprang  up  in  every  part  of  Europe  during  the 
following  centuries.  Vitalized  by  this  stream,  all  mediaeval 
growths  of  mercy  bloomed  luxuriantly.  To  say  nothing 
of  those  at  an  earlier  period,  we  have  in  the  time  of  the 
Crusades  great  charitable  organizations  like  the  Order  of 

more  succinct  accounts,  Baas,  Geschichte  der  Medicin,  pp.  15-29  ;  also  Isensee ; 
also  Fredault,  Histoire  de  la  Me"decine,  chap.  i.  For  the  effort  in  Egyptian  medi- 
cine to  deal  with  demons  and  witches,  see  Heinrich  Brugsch,  Die  Aegyptologie, 
Leipsic,  1891,  p.  77  ;  and  for  references  to  the  Papyrus  Ebers,  etc.,  pp.  155,  407, 
and  following.  For  fear  of  dissection  and  prejudices  against  it  in  Egypt,  like  those 
in  mediaeval  Europe,  see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  Dawn  of  Civilization,  p.  216.  For 
the  derivation  of  priestly  medicine  in  Egypt,  see  Baas,  pp.  16,  22.  For  the 
fame  of  Egyptian  medicine  at  Rome,  see  Sharpe,  History  of  Egypt,  vol.  ii,  pp.  151, 
184.  For  Assyria,  see  especially  George  Smith  in  Delitzsch's  German  transla- 
tion, p.  34,  and  F.  Delitzsch's  appendix,  p.  27.  On  the  cheapness  and  common- 
ness of  miracles  of  healing  in  antiquity,  see  Sharpe,  quoting  St.  Jerome,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  276,  277.  As  to  the  influence  of  Chaldean  ideas  of  magic  and  disease  on 
neighbouring  nations,  see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  as  above,  pp.  782,  783.  As  to  the 
freedom  of  ancient  Greece  from  the  idea  of  demoniacal  intervention  in  disease,  see 
Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  i,  p.  404  and  note.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  see  reference  in  Homer  to  diseases  caused  by  a  "demon."  For  the  evolu- 
tion of  medicine  before  and  after  Hippocrates,  see  Sprengel.  For  a  good  summing 
up  of  the  work  of  Hippocrates,  see  Baas,  p.  201.  For  the  necessary  passage  of  medi- 
cine in  its  early  stages  under  priestly  control,  see  Cabanis,  The  Revolution  of  Med- 
ical Science,  London,  180C,  chap.  ii.  On  Jewish  ideas  regarding  demons,  and  their 
relation  to  sickness,  see  Toy,  Judaism  and  CInistiatiity,  Boston,  1891,  pp.  16S  et 
scq.  For  avoidance  of  dissections  of  human  subjects  even  by  Galen  and  his  disci- 
ples, see  Maurice  Albert,  Les  Afe'decins  Grecs  a  Rome,  Paris,  1894,  chap.  xi.  For 
Herophilus,  Erasistratus,  and  the  School  of  Alexandria,  see  Sprengel,  vol.  i,  pp. 
433,  434  et  sea. 


FROM    MIRACLES    TO    MEDICINE. 

St.  John  of  Jerusalem,  and  thenceforward  every  means  of 
bringing  the  spirit  of  Jesus  to  help  afflicted  humanity.  So, 
too,  through  all  those  ages  we  have  a  succession  of  men 
and  women  devoting  themselves  to  works  of  mercy,  culmi- 
nating during  modern  times  in  saints  like  Vincent  de  Paul, 
Francke,  Howard,  Elizabeth  Fry,  Florence  Nightingale,  and 
Muhlenberg. 

But  while  this  vast  influence,  poured  forth  from  the  heart 
of  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  streamed  through  century 
after  century,  inspiring  every  development  of  mercy,  there 
came  from  those  who  organized  the  Church  which  bears  his 
name,  and  from  those  who  afterward  developed  and  directed 
it,  another  stream  of  influence — a  theology  drawn  partly 
from  prehistoric  conceptions  of  unseen  powers,  partly  from 
ideas  developed  in  the  earliest  historic  nations,  but  es- 
pecially from  the  letter  of  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  sacred 
books. 

The  theology  developed  out  of  our  sacred  literature  in 
relation  to  the  cure  of  disease  was  mainly  twofold  :  first, 
there  was  a  new  and  strong  evolution  of  the  old  idea  that 
physical  disease  is  produced  by  the  wrath  of  God  or  the 
malice  of  Satan,  or  by  a  combination  of  both,  which  theology 
was  especially  called  in  to  explain  ;  secondly,  there  were 
evolved  theories  of  miraculous  methods  of  cure,  based  upon 
modes  of  appeasing  the  Divine  anger,  or  of  thwarting  Sa- 
tanic malice. 

Along  both  these  streams  of  influence,  one  arising  in  the 
life  of  Jesus,  and  the  other  in  the  reasonings  of  theologians, 
legends  of  miracles  grew  luxuriantly.  It  would  be  utterly 
unphilosophical  to  attribute  these  as  a  whole  to  conscious 
fraud.  Whatever  part  priestcraft  may  have  taken  afterward 
in  sundry  discreditable  developments  of  them,  the  mass  of 
miraculous  legends,  century  after  century,  grew  up  mainly 
in  good  faith,  and  as  naturally  as  elms  along  water-courses 
or  flowers  upon  the  prairie. 


GROWTH   OF   LEGENDS   OF    HEALING. 


II.   GROWTH    OF   LEGENDS   OF    HEALING.— THE    LIFE   OF 
XAVIER    AS    A    TYPICAL    EXAMPLE. 

Legends  of  miracles  have  thus  grown  about  the  lives  of 
all  great  benefactors  of  humanity  in  early  ages,  and  about 
saints  and  devotees.  Throughout  human  history  the  lives 
of  such  personages,  almost  without  exception,  have  been 
accompanied  or  followed  by  a  literature  in  which  legends 
of  miraculous  powers  form  a  very  important  part — a  part 
constantly  increasing  until  a  different  mode  of  looking  at 
nature  and  of  weighing  testimony  causes  miracles  to  dis- 
appear. While  modern  thought  holds  the  testimony  to  the 
vast  mass  of  such  legends  in  all  ages  as  worthless,  it  is  very 
widely  acknowledged  that  great  and  gifted  beings  who  en- 
dow the  earth  with  higher  religious  ideas,  gaining  the  deep- 
est hold  upon  the  hearts  and  minds  of  multitudes,  may  at 
times  exercise  such  influence  upon  those  about  them  that 
the  sick  in  mind  or  body  are  helped  or  healed. 

We  have  within  the  modern  period  very  many  examples 
which  enable  us  to  study  the  evolution  of  legendary  mir- 
acles. Out  of  these  I  will  select  but  one,  which  is  chosen  be- 
cause it  is  the  life  of  one  of  the  most  noble  and  devoted  men 
in  the  history  of  humanity,  one  whose  biography  is  before 
the  world  with  its  most  minute  details — in  his  own  letters,  in 
the  letters  of  his  associates,  in  contemporary  histories,  and  in 
a  multitude  of  biographies :  this  man  is  St.  Francis  Xavier. 
From  these  sources  I  draw  the  facts  now  to  be  given,  but 
none  of  them  are  of  Protestant  origin  ;  every  source  from 
which  I  shall  draw  is  Catholic  and  Roman,  and  published 
under  the  sanction  of  the  Church. 

Born  a  Spanish  noble,  Xavier  at  an  early  age  cast  aside 
all  ordinary  aims,  devoted  himself  to  study,  was  rapidly  ad- 
vanced to  a  professorship  at  Paris,  and  in  this  position  was 
rapidly  winning  a  commanding  influence,  when  he  came  un- 
der the  sway  of  another  Spaniard  even  greater,  though  less 
brilliantly  endowed,  than  himself — Ignatius  Loyola,  founder 
of  the  Society  of  Jesus.  The  result  was  that  the  young  pro- 
fessor sacrificed  the  brilliant  career  on  which  he  had  en- 
tered at  the  French  capital,  went  to  the  far  East  as  a  simple 


6  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

missionary,  and  there  devoted  his  remaining  years  to  re- 
deeming the  lowest  and  most  wretched  of  our  race. 

Among  the  various  tribes,  first  in  lower  India  and  after- 
ward in  Japan,  he  wrought  untiringly — toiling  through  vil- 
lage after  village,  collecting  the  natives  by  the  sound  of  a 
hand-bell,  trying  to  teach  them  the  simplest  Christian  formu- 
las; and  thus  he  brought  myriads  of  them  to  a  nominal  con- 
fession of  the  Christian  faith.  After  twelve  years  of  such 
efforts,  seeking  new  conquests  for  religion,  he  sacrificed  his 
life  on  the  desert  island  of  San  Chan. 

During  his  career  as  a  missionary  he  wrote  great  num- 
bers of  letters,  which  were  preserved  and  have  since  been 
published  ;  and  these,  with  the  letters  of  his  contemporaries, 
exhibit  clearly  all  the  features  of  his  life.  His  own  writings 
are  very  minute,  and  enable  us  to  follow  him  fully.  No  ac- 
count of  a  miracle  wrought  by  him  appears  either  in  his  own 
letters  or  in  any  contemporary  document.*  At  the  outside, 
but  two  or  three  things  occurred  in  his  whole  life,  as  exhib- 
ited so  fully  by  himself  and  his  contemporaries,  for  which 
the  most  earnest  devotee  could  claim  anything  like  Divine 
interposition ;  and  these  are  such  as  may  be  read  in  the 
letters  of  very  many  fervent  missionaries,  Protestant  as 
well  as  Catholic.  For  example,  in  the  beginning  of  his 
career,  during  a  journey  in  Europe  with  an  ambassador,  one 
of  the  servants  in  fording  a  stream  got  into  deep  water  and 
was  in  danger  of  drowning.  Xavier  tells  us  that  the  ambas- 
sador prayed  very  earnestly,  and  that  the  man  finally  strug- 
gled out  of  the  stream.  But  within  sixty  years  after  his 
death,  at  his  canonization,  and  by  various  biographers,  this 
had  been  magnified  into  a  miracle,  and  appears  in  the  va- 
rious histories  dressed  out  in  glowing  colours.  Xavier  tells 
us  that  the  ambassador  prayed  for  the  safety  of  the  young 
man ;  but  his  biographers  tell  us  that  it  was  Xavier  who 
prayed,  and  finally,  by  the  later  writers,   Xavier  is   repre- 

*  This  statement  was  denied  with  much  explosive  emphasis  by  a  writer  in  the 
Catholic  World  for  September  and  October,  iSgi,  but  he  brought  no  fact  to  sup- 
port this  denial.  I  may  perhaps  be  allowed  to  remind  the  reverend  writer  that 
since  the  days  of  Pascal,  whose  eminence  in  the  Church  he  will  hardly  dispute, 
the  bare  assertion  even  of  a  Jesuit  father  against  established  facts  needs  some  sup- 
port other  than  mere  scurrility. 


GROWTH   OF   LEGENDS   OF    HEALING.  y 

sented    as    lifting  horse  and  rider  out  of  the   stream   by   a 
clearly  supernatural  act. 

Still  another  claim  to  miracle  is  based  upon  his  arriving  at 
Lisbon  and  finding  his  great  colleague,  Simon  Rodriguez,  ill 
of  fever.  Xavier  informs  us  in  a  very  simple  way  that  Ro- 
driguez was  so  overjoyed  to  see  him  that  the  fever  did  not 
return.  This  is  entirely  similar  to  the  cure  which  Martin 
Luther  wrought  upon  Melanchthon.  Melanchthon  had 
broken  down  and  was  supposed  to  be  dying,  when  his  joy 
at  the  long-delayed  visit  of  Luther  brought  him  to  his  feet 
again,  after  which  he  lived  for  many  years. 

Again,  it  is  related  that  Xavier,  rinding  a  poor  native 
woman  very  ill,  baptized  her,  saying  over  her  the  prayers  of 
the  Church,  and  she  recovered. 

Two  or  three  occurrences  like  these  form  the  whole 
basis  for  the  miraculous  account,  so  far  as  Xavier's  own 
writings  are  concerned. 

Of  miracles  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word  there  is  in 
these  letters  of  his  no  mention.  Though  he  writes  of  his 
doings  with  especial  detail,  taking  evident  pains  to  note 
everything  which  he  thought  a  sign  of  Divine  encourage- 
ment, he  says  nothing  of  his  performing  miracles,  and  evi- 
dently knows  nothing  of  them.  This  is  clearly  not  due  to 
his  unwillingness  to  make  known  any  token  of  Divine 
favour.  As  we  have  seen,  he  is  very  prompt  to  report  any- 
thing which  may  be  considered  an  answer  to  prayer  or  an 
evidence  of  the  power  of  religious  means  to  improve  the 
bodily  or  spiritual  health  of  those  to  whom  he  was  sent. 

Nor  do  the  letters  of  his  associates  show  knowledge  of 
any  miracles  wrought  by  him.  His  brother  missionaries, 
who  were  in  constant  and  loyal  fellowship  with  him,  make 
no  allusions  to  them  in  their  communications  with  each 
other  or  with  their  brethren  in  Europe. 

Of  this  fact  we  have  many  striking  evidences.  Various 
collections  of  letters  from  the  Jesuit  missionaries  in  India 
and  the  East  generally,  during  the  years  of  Xavier's  activity, 
were  published,  and  in  not  one  of  these  letters  written  dur- 
ing Xavier's  lifetime  appears  any  account  of  a  miracle 
wrought  by  him.  As  typical  of  these  collections  we  may 
take   perhaps  the   most   noted  of  all,  that  which   was   pub- 


8  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

lished  about  twenty  years  after  Xavier's  death  by  a  Jesuit 
father,  Emanuel  Acosta. 

The  letters  given  in  it  were  written  by  Xavier  and  his 
associates  not  only  from  Goa,  which  was  the  focus  of  all 
missionary  effort  and  the  centre  of  all  knowledge  regarding 
their  work  in  the  East,  but  from  all  other  important  points 
in  the  great  field.  The  first  of  them  were  written  during 
the  saint's  lifetime,  but,  though  filled  with  every  sort  of  de- 
tail regarding  missionary  life  and  work,  they  say  nothing 
regarding  any  miracles  by  Xavier. 

The  same  is  true  of  various  other  similar  collections  pub- 
lished during  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  In 
not  one  of  them  does  any  mention  of  a  miracle  by  Xavier 
appear  in  a  letter  from  India  or  the  East  contemporary  with 
him. 

This  silence  regarding  his  miracles  was  clearly  not  due 
to  any  "  evil  heart  of  unbelief."  On  the  contrary,  these  good 
missionary  fathers  were  prompt  to  record  the  slightest  oc- 
currence which  they  thought  evidence  of  the  Divine  favour: 
it  is  indeed  touching  to  see  how  eagerly  they  grasp  at  the 
most  trivial  things  which  could  be  thus  construed. 

Their  ample  faith  was  fully  shown.  One  of  them,  in 
Acosta's  collection,  sends  a  report  that  an  illuminated  cross 
had  been  recently  seen  in  the  heavens ;  another,  that  devils 
had  been  cast  out  of  the  natives  by  the  use  of  holy  water; 
another,  that  various  cases  of  disease  had  been  helped  and 
even  healed  by  baptism  ;  and  sundry  others  sent  reports  that 
the  blind  and  dumb  had  been  restored,  and  that  even  lepers 
had  been  cleansed  by  the  proper  use  of  the  rites  of  the 
Church  ;  but  to  Xavier  no  miracles  are  imputed  by  his  asso- 
ciates during  his  life  or  during  several  years  after  his  death. 

On  the  contrary,  we  find  his  own  statements  as  to  his  per- 
sonal limitations,  and  the  difficulties  arising  from  them,  fully 
confirmed  by  his  brother  workers.  It  is  interesting,  for  ex- 
ample, in  view  of  the  claim  afterward  made  that  the  saint 
was  divinely  endowed  for  his  mission  with  the  "  gift  of 
tongues,"  to  note  in  these  letters  confirmation  of  Xavier's 
own  statement  utterly  disproving  the  existence  of  any  such 
Divine  gift,  and  detailing  the  difficulties  which  he  encoun- 
tered from  his  want  of  knowing  various  languages,  and  the 


GROWTH    OF    LEGENDS   OF    HEALING.  g 

hard  labour  which  he  underwent  in  learning  the  elements 
of  the  Japanese  tongue. 

Until  about  ten  years  after  Xavier's  death,  then,  as 
Emanuel  Acosta's  publication  shows,  the  letters  of  the  mis- 
sionaries continued  without  any  indication  of  miracles  per- 
formed by  the  saint.  Though,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 
abundant  legends  had  already  begun  to  grow  elsewhere,  not 
one  word  regarding  these  miracles  came  as  yet  from  the 
country  which,  according  to  later  accounts  accepted  and 
sanctioned  by  the  Church,  was  at  this  very  period  filled  with 
miracles ;  not  the  slightest  indication  of  them  from  the  men 
who  were  supposed  to  be  in  the  very  thick  of  these  mirac- 
ulous manifestations. 

But  this  negative  evidence  is  by  no  means  all.  There  is 
also  positive  evidence — direct  testimony  from  the  Jesuit 
order  itself — that  Xavier  wrought  no  miracles. 

For  not  only  did  neither  Xavier  nor  his  co-workers  know 
anything  of  the  mighty  works  afterward  attributed  to  him, 
but  the  highest  contemporary  authority  on  the  whole  sub- 
ject, a  man  in  the  closest  correspondence  with  those  who 
knew  most  about  the  saint,  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Jesus 
in  the  highest  standing  and  one  of  its  accepted  historians, 
not  only  expressly  tells  us  that  Xavier  wrought  no  miracles, 
but  gives  the  reasons  why  he  wrought  none. 

This  man  was  Joseph  Acosta,  a  provincial  of  the  Jesuit 
order,  its  visitor  in  Aragon,  superior  at  Valladolid,  and 
finally  rector  of  the  University  of  Salamanca.  In  1 571, 
nineteen  years  after  Xavier's  death,  Acosta  devoted  himself 
to  writing  a  work  mainly  concerning  the  conversion  of  the 
Indies,  and  in  this  he  refers  especially  and  with  the  greatest 
reverence  to  Xavier,  holding  him  up  as  an  ideal  and  his 
work  as  an  example. 

But  on  the  same  page  with  this  tribute  to  the  great  mis- 
sionary Acosta  goes  on  to  discuss  the  reasons  why  progress 
in  the  world's  conversion  is  not  so  rapid  as  in  the  early  apos- 
tolic times,  and  says  that  an  especial  cause  why  apostolic 
preaching  could  no  longer  produce  apostolic  results  "  lies  in 
the  missionaries  themselves,  because  there  is  now  no  power 
of  working  miracles." 

He  then  asks,  "  Why  should  our  age  be  so  completely 


IO  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

destitute  of  them?"  This  question  he  answers  at  great 
length,  and  one  of  his  main  contentions  is  that  in  early  apos- 
tolic times  illiterate  men  had  to  convert  the  learned  of  the 
world,  whereas  in  modern  times  the  case  is  reversed,  learned 
men  being  sent  to  convert  the  illiterate  ;  and  hence  that  "  in 
the  early  times  miracles  were  necessary,  but  in  our  time 
they  are  not." 

This  statement  and  argument  refer,  as  we  have  seen, 
directly  to  Xavier  by  name,  and  to  the  period  covered  by 
his  activity  and  that  of  the  other  great  missionaries  of  his 
time.  That  the  Jesuit  order  and  the  Church  at  large 
thought  this  work  of  Acosta  trustworthy  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  it  was  published  at  Salamanca  a  few  years  after  it 
was  written,  and  republished  afterward  with  ecclesiastical 
sanction  in  France.* 


*  The  work  of  Joseph  Acosta  is  in  the  Cornell  University  Library,  its  title 
being  as  follows :  De  Natura  Novi  Orbis  libri  duo  et  De  Promulgatione  Evan- 
gelii  apud  Barbaros,  sive  De  Procuranda  Indorttm  Salute,  libri  sex,  autore 
Josepho  Acosta,  presbytero  Societatis  Jesu.  I.  H.  S.  Salmanticce,  apud  Guillel- 
tnum  Foquel,  MDLXXXIX.  For  the  passages  cited  directly  contradicting  the 
working  of  miracles  by  Xavier  and  his  associates,  see  lib.  ii,  cap.  ix,  of  which  the 
title  runs,  Car  Miracula  in  Conversiorte  gentium  nonfiant  nunc,  ut  olitn,  a  Christi 
pradicatoribus,  especially  pp.  242-245  ;  also  lib.  ii,  cap.  viii,  pp.  237  et  sea.  For 
a  passage  which  shows  that  Xavier  was  not  then  at  all  credited  with  "  the  miracu- 
lous gift  of  tongues,"  see  lib.  i,  cap.  vii,  p.  173.  Since  writing  the  above,  my  atten- 
tion has  been  called  to  the  alleged  miraculous  preservation  of  Xavier's  body  claimed 
in  sundry  letters  contemporary  with  its  disinterment  at  San  Chan  and  reinterment 
at  Goa.  There  is  no  reason  why  this  preservation  need  in  itself  be  doubted,  and 
no  reason  why  it  should  be  counted  miraculous.  Such  exceptional  preservation  of 
bodies  has  been  common  enough  in  all  ages,  and,  alas  for  the  claims  of  the  Church, 
quite  as  common  of  pagans  or  Protestants  as  of  good  Catholics.  One  of  the  most 
famous  cases  is  that  of  the  fair  Roman  maiden,  Julia,  daughter  of  Claudius,  over 
whose  exhumation  at  Rome,  in  1485,  such  ado  was  made  by  the  sceptical  scholars 
of  the  Renaissance.  Contemporary  observers  tell  us  enthusiastically  that  she  was 
very  beautiful,  perfectly  preserved,  "  the  bloom  of  youth  still  upon  her  cheeks," 
and  exhaling  a  "  sweet  odour " ;  but  this  enthusiasm  was  so  little  to  the  taste  of 
Pope  Innocent  VIII  that  he  had  her  reburied  secretly  by  night.  Only  the  other 
day,  in  June  of  the  year  1895,  there  was  unearthed  at  Stade,  in  Hanover,  the 
"  perfectly  preserved  "  body  of  a  soldier  of  the  eighth  century.  So,  too,  I  might 
mention  the  bodies  preserved  at  the  church  of  St.  Thomas  at  Strasburg,  beneath 
the  Cathedral  of  Bremen,  and  elsewhere  during  hundreds  of  years  past  ;  also  the 
cases  of  "  adipoceration  "  in  various  American  cemeteries,  which  never  grow  less 
wonderful  by  repetition  from  mouth  to  mouth  and  in  the  public  prints.  But,  while 
such  preservation  is  not  incredible  nor  even  strange,  there  is  much  reason  why  pre- 
cisely in  the  case  of  a  saint  like  St.  Francis  Xavier  the  evidence  for  it  should  be 


GROWTH   OF    LEGENDS   OF    HEALING.  u 

Nothing-  shows  better  than  the   sequel   how  completely 
the  evolution  of  miraculous  accounts  depends  upon  the  in- 


received  with  especial  caution.  What  the  touching  fidelity  of  disciples  may  lead 
them  to  believe  and  proclaim  regarding  an  adored  leader  in  a  time  when  faith  is 
thought  more  meritorious  than  careful  statement,  and  miracle  more  probable  than 
the  natural  course  of  things,  is  seen,  for  example,  in  similar  pious  accounts  regard- 
ing the  bodies  of  many  other  saints,  especially  that  of  St.  Carlo  Borromeo,  so  justly 
venerated  by  the  Church  for  his  beautiful  and  charitable  life.  And  yet  any  one 
looking  at  the  relics  of  various  saints,  especially  those  of  St.  Carlo,  preserved  with 
such  tender  care  in  the  crypt  of  Milan  Cathedral,  will  see  that  they  have  shared 
the  common  fate,  being  either  mummified  or  reduced  to  skeletons  ;  and  this  is  true 
in  all  cases,  so  far  as  my  observation  has  extended.  What  even  a  great  theologian 
can  be  induced  to  believe  and  testify  in  a  somewhat  similar  matter,  is  seen  in  St. 
Augustine's  declaration  that  the  flesh  of  the  peacock,  which  in  antiquity  and  in  the 
early  Church  was  considered  a  bird  somewhat  supernaturally  endowed,  is  incor- 
ruptible. The  saint  declares  that  he  tested  it  and  found  it  so  (see  the  De  Civitate 
Dei,  xxi,  c.  4,  under  the  passage  beginning  Qitis  enim  Deus).  With  this  we  may 
compare  the  testimony  of  the  pious  author  of  Sir  John  Mandeville's  Travels,  that 
iron  floats  upon  the  Dead  Sea  while  feathers  sink  in  it,  and  that  he  would  not  have 
believed  this  had  he  not  seen  it.  So,  too,  testimony  to  the  "  sweet  odour  "  diffused 
by  the  exhumed  remains  of  the  saint  seems  to  indicate  feeling  rather  than  fact — the 
highly  wrought  feeling  of  disciples  standing  by — the  same  feeling  which  led  those 
who  visited  St.  Simon  Stylites  on  his  heap  of  ordure,  and  other  hermits  unwashed 
and  living  in  filth,  to  dwell  upon  the  delicious  "odour  of  sanctity"  pervading  the 
air.  In  point,  perhaps,  is  Louis  Veuillot's  idealization  of  the  " parfum  de  Rome" 
in  face  of  the  fact,  to  which  the  present  writer  and  thousands  of  others  can  testify, 
that  under  papal  rule  Rome  was  materially  one  of  the  most  filthy  cities  in  Christen- 
dom. For  the  case  of  Julia,  see  the  contemporary  letter  printed  by  Janitschek, 
Gesellschaft  der  Renaissance  in  Italien,  p.  120,  note  167;  also  Infessura,  Diarium 
Rom.  Urbis,  in  Muratori,  torn,  iii,  pt.  2,  col.  1192,  1193,  and  elsewhere  ;  also  Symonds, 
Renaissance  in  Italy  :  Age  of  the  Despots,  p.  22.  For  the  case  at  Stade,  see  press 
dispatch  from  Berlin  in  newspapers  of  June  24,  25,  1895.  The  copy  of  Emanuel 
Acosta  I  have  mainly  used  is  that  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Munich,  De  Japonicis 
rebus  epistolarum  libri  iiii,  item  recngniti  ;  et  in  Latinnm  ex  Hispanico  sennone  con- 
versi,  Dilingre,  MDLXXI.  I  have  since  obtained  and  used  the  work  now  in  the 
library  of  Cornell  University,  being  the  letters  and  commentary  published  by 
Emanuel  Acosta  and  attached  to  Maffei's  book  on  the  History  of  the  Indies,  pub- 
lished at  Antwerp  in  1685.  For  the  first  beginnings  of  miracles  wrought  by  Xavier, 
as  given  in  the  letters  of  the  missionaries,  see  that  of  Almeida,  lib.  ii,  p.  183.  Of 
other  collections,  or  selections  from  collections,  of  letters  which  fail  to  give  any  in- 
dication of  miracles  wrought  by  Xavier  during  his  life,  see  Wytfliet  and  Magin,  His- 
toire  Universelle  des  Indes  Occidentales  et  Orientales,  et  de  la  Conversion  des  Indiens, 
Douay,  161 1.  Though  several  letters  of  Xavier  and  his  fellow-missionaries  are 
given,  dated  at  the  very  period  of  his  alleged  miracles,  not  a  trace  of  miracles 
appears  in  these.  Also  Epistolce  JaponiccB  de  multorum  in  variis  Insults  Gentilium 
ad  Christi  fidem  Conversione,  Lovanii,  1570.  These  letters  were  written  by  Xavier 
and  his  companions  from  the  East  Indies  and  Japan,  and  cover  the  years  from  1549 
to  1564.  Though  these  refer  frequently  to  Xavier,  there  is  no  mention  of  a  miracle 
wrought  by  him  in  any  of  them  written  during  his  lifetime. 


12  FROM    MIRACLES    TO    MEDICINE. 

tellectual  atmosphere  of  any  land  and  time,  and  how  inde- 
pendent it  is  of  fact. 

For,  shortly  after  Xavier's  heroic  and  beautiful  death  in 
1552,  stories  of  miracles  wrought  by  him  began  to  appear. 
At  first  they  were  few  and  feeble  ;  and  two  years  later  Mel- 
chior  Nunez,  Provincial  of  the  Jesuits  in  the  Portuguese 
dominions,  with  all  the  means  at  his  command,  and  a  corre- 
spondence extending  throughout  Eastern  Asia,  had  been 
able  to  hear  of  but  three.  These  were  entirely  from  hear- 
say. First,  John  Deyro  said  he  knew  that  Xavier  had  the 
gift  of  prophecy  ;  but,  unfortunately,  Xavier  himself  had  rep- 
rimanded and  cast  off  Deyro  for  untruthfulness  and  cheatery. 
Secondly,  it  was  reported  vaguely  that  at  Cape  Comorin 
many  persons  affirmed  that  Xavier  had  raised  a  man  from 
the  dead.  Thirdly,  Father  Pablo  de  Santa  Fe  had  heard 
that  in  Japan  Xavier  had  restored  sight  to  a  blind  man. 
This  seems  a  feeble  beginning,  but  little  by  little  the  stories 
grew,  and  in  1555  De  Quadros,  Provincial  of  the  Jesuits  in 
Ethiopia,  had  heard  of  nine  miracles,  and  asserted  that  Xa- 
vier had  healed  the  sick  and  cast  out  devils.  The  next  year, 
being  four  years  after  Xavier's  death,  King  John  III  of 
Portugal,  a  very  devout  man,  directed  his  viceroy  Barreto 
to  draw  up  and  transmit  to  him  an  authentic  account  of 
Xavier's  miracles,  urging  him  especially  to  do  the  work 
"  with  zeal  and  speedily."  We  can  well  imagine  what  treas- 
ures of  grace  an  obsequious  viceroy,  only  too  anxious  to 
please  a  devout  king,  could  bring  together  by  means  of  the 
hearsay  of  ignorant,  compliant  natives  through  all  the  little 
towns  of  Portuguese  India. 

But  the  letters  of  the  missionaries  who  had  been  co-work- 
ers or  immediate  successors  of  Xavier  in  his  Eastern  field 
were  still  silent  as  regards  any  miracles  bv  him,  and  they 
remained  silent  for  nearly  ten  years.  In  the  collection  of 
letters  published  by  Emanuel  Acosta  and  others  no  hint  at 
any  miracles  by  him  is  given,  until  at  last,  in  1562,  fully  ten 
years  after  Xavier's  death,  the  first  faint  beginnings  of  these 
legends  appear  in  them. 

At  that  time  the  Jesuit  Almeida,  writing  at  great  length 
to  the  brethren,  stated  that  he  had  found  a  pious  woman  who 
believed  that  a  book  left  behind  bv  Xavier  had  healed  sick 


GROWTH    OF    LEGENDS   OF    HEALING. 


13 


folk  when  it  was  laid  upon  them,  and  that  he  had  met  an  old 
man  who  preserved  a  whip  left  by  the  saint  which,  when 
properly  applied  to  the  sick,  had  been  found  good  both  for 
their  bodies  and  their  souls.  From  these  and  other  small 
beginnings  grew,  always  luxuriant  and  sometimes  beautiful, 
the  vast  mass  of  legends  which  we  shall  see  hereafter. 

This  growth  was  affectionately  garnered  by  the  more 
zealous  and  less  critical  brethren  in  Europe  until  it  had  be- 
come enormous;  but  it  appears  to  have  been  thought  of  little 
value  by  those  best  able  to  judge. 

For  when,  in  1562,  Julius  Gabriel  Eugubinus  delivered  a 
solemn  oration  on  the  condition  and  glory  of  the  Church,  be- 
fore the  papal  legates  and  other  fathers  assembled  at  the 
Council  of  Trent,  while  he  alluded  to  a  multitude  of  things 
showing  the  Divine  favour,  there  was  not  the  remotest  allu- 
sion to  the  vast  multitude  of  miracles  which,  according  to 
the  legends,  had  been  so  profusely  lavished  on  the  faithful 
during  many  years,  and  which,  if  they  had  actually  occurred, 
formed  an  argument  of  prodigious  value  in  behalf  of  the  spe- 
cial claims  of  the  Church. 

The  same  complete  absence  of  knowledge  of  any  such 
favours  vouchsafed  to  the  Church,  or  at  least  of  any  belief  in 
them,  appears  in  that  great  Council  of  Trent  among  the 
fathers  themselves.  Certainly  there,  if  anywhere,  one  might 
on  the  Roman  theory  expect  Divine  illumination  in  a  matter 
of  this  kind.  The  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  midst 
of  it  was  especially  claimed,  and  yet  its  members,  with  all 
their  spiritual  as  well  as  material  advantages  for  knowing 
what  had  been  going  on  in  the  Church  during  the  previous 
thirty  years,  and  with  Xavier's  own  friend  and  colleague, 
Laynez,  present  to  inform  them,  show  not  the  slightest  sign 
of  any  suspicion  of  Xavier's  miracles.  We  have  the  letters 
of  Julius  Gabriel  to  the  foremost  of  these  fathers  assembled 
at  Trent,  from  1557  onward  for  a  considerable  time,  and 
we  have  also  a  multitude  of  letters  written  from  the  Council 
by  bishops,  cardinals,  and  even  by  the  Pope  himself,  discuss- 
ing all  sorts  of  Church  affairs,  and  in  not  one  of  these  is  there 
evidence  of  the  remotest  suspicion  that  any  of  these  reports, 
which  they  must  have  heard,  regarding  Xavier's  miracles, 
were  worthv  of  mention. 


14  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

Here,  too,  comes  additional  supplementary  testimony  of 
much  significance.  With  these  orations  and  letters,  Eugubi- 
nus  gives  a  Latin  translation  of  a  letter,  "  on  religious  affairs 
in  the  Indies,"  written  by  a  Jesuit  father  twenty  years  after 
Xavier's  death.  Though  the  letter  came  from  a  field  very 
distant  from  that  in  which  Xavier  laboured,  it  was  sure, 
among  the  general  tokens  of  Divine  favour  to  the  Church 
and  to  the  order,  on  which  it  dwelt,  to  have  alluded  to  mira- 
cles wrought  by  Xavier  had  there  been  the  slightest  ground 
for  believing  in  them  ;  but  no  such  allusion  appears.* 

So,  too,  when  in  1588,  thirty-six  years  after  Xavier's 
death,  the  Jesuit  father  Maffei,  who  had  been  especially  con- 
versant with  Xavier's  career  in  the  East,  published  his  His- 
tory of  India,  though  he  gave  a  biography  of  Xavier  which 
shows  fervent  admiration  for  his  subject,  he  dwelt  very 
lightly  on  the  alleged  miracles.  But  the  evolution  of  mirac- 
ulous legends  still  went  on.  Six  years  later,  in  1594,  Father 
Tursellinus  published  his  Life  of  Xavier,  and  in  this  appears 
to  have  made  the  first  large  use  of  the  information  collected 
by  the  Portuguese  viceroy  and  the  more  zealous  brethren. 
This  work  shows  a  vast  increase  in  the  number  of  miracles 
over  those  given  by  all  sources  together  up  to  that  time. 
Xavier  is  represented  as  not  only  curing  the  sick,  but  casting 
out  devils,  stilling  the  tempest,  raising  the  dead,  and  per- 
forming miracles  of  every  sort. 

In  1622  came  the  canonization  proceedings  at  Rome. 
Among  the  speeches  made  in  the  presence  of  Pope  Gregory 
XV,  supporting  the  claims  of  Xavier  to  saintship,  the  most 
important  was  by  Cardinal  Monte.  In  this  the  orator  se- 
lects out  ten  great  miracles  from  those  performed  by  Xavier 
during  his  lifetime  and  describes  them  minutely.  He  insists 
that  on  a  certain  occasion  Xavier,  by  the  sign  of  the  cross, 
made  sea-water  fresh,  so  that  his  fellow-passengers  and  the 
crew  could  drink  it ;  that  he  healed  the  sick  and  raised  the 
dead  in  various  places;  brought  back  a  lost  boat  to  his  ship; 
was  on  one  occasion  lifted  from  the  earth  bodily  and  trans- 


*  For  the  work  referred  to,  see  Julii  Gabrielii  Eugubini  oration  um  et  episto- 
larum,  etc.,  libri  duo  [<V]  Epistola  de  rebus  Indicis  d  quodam  Societatis  Jesn  pres- 
bytero,  etc.,  Venetiis,  1569.     The  Epistola  begins  at  fol.  44. 


GROWTH    OF    LEGENDS   OF   HEALING.  15 

figured  before  the  bystanders;  and  that,  to  punish  a  blas- 
pheming town,  he  caused  an  earthquake  and  buried  the 
offenders  in  cinders  from  a  volcano :  this  was  afterward  still 
more  highly  developed,  and  the  saint  was  represented  in 
engravings  as  calling  down  fire  from  heaven  and  thus  de- 
stroying the  town. 

The  most  curious  miracle  of  all  is  the  eighth  on  the  car- 
dinal's list.  Regarding  this  he  states  that,  Xavier  having 
durino-  one  of  his  voyages  lost  overboard  a  crucifix,  it  was 
restored  to  him  after  he  had  reached  the  shore  by  a  crab. 

The  cardinal  also  dwelt  on  miracles  performed  by  Xa- 
vier's  relics  after  his  death,  the  most  original  being  that  sun- 
dry lamps  placed  before  the  image  of  the  saint  and  filled 
with  holy  water  burned  as  if  filled  with  oil. 

This  latter  account  appears  to  have  deeply  impressed  the 
Pope,  for  in  the  Bull  of  Canonization  issued  by  virtue  of  his 
power  of  teaching  the  universal  Church  infallibly  in  all  mat- 
ters pertaining  to  faith  and  morals,  His  Holiness  dwells  espe- 
cially upon  the  miracle  of  the  lamp  filled  with  holy  water 
and  burning  before  Xavier's  image. 

Xavier  having  been  made  a  saint,  many  other  Lives  of 
him  appeared,  and,  as  a  rule,  each  surpassed  its  predecessor 
in  the  multitude  of  miracles.  In  1622  appeared  that  com- 
piled and  published  under  the  sanction  of  Father  Vitelleschi, 
and  in  it  not  only  are  new  miracles  increased,  but  some  old 
ones  are  greatly  improved.  One  example  will  suffice  to 
show  the  process.  In  his  edition  of  1596,  Tursellinus  had 
told  how,  Xavier  one  day  needing  money,  and  having  asked 
Vellio,  one  of  his  friends,  to  let  him  have  some,  Vellio  gave 
him  the  key  of  a  safe  containing  thirty  thousand  gold 
pieces.  Xavier  took  three  hundred  and  returned  the  key 
to  Vellio ;  whereupon  Vellio,  finding  only  three  hundred 
pieces  gone,  reproached  Xavier  for  not  taking  more,  saying 
that  he  had  expected  to  give  him  half  of  all  that  the  strong 
box  contained.  Xavier,  touched  by  this  generosity,  told 
Vellio  that  the  time  of  his  death  should  be  made  known  to 
him,  that  he  might  have  opportunity  to  repent  of  his  sins  and 
prepare  for  eternity.  But  twenty-six  years  later  the  Life  of 
Xavier  published  under  the  sanction  of  Vitelleschi,  giving 
the  story,  says  that  Vellio  on  opening  the  safe  found  that  all 


1 6  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

his  money  remained  as  he  had  left  it,  and  that  none  at  all  had 
disappeared  ;  in  fact,  that  there  had  been  a  miraculous  resti- 
tution. On  his  blaming-  Xavier  for  not  taking  the  money, 
Xavier  declares  to  Vellio  that  not  only  shall  he  be  apprised 
of  the  moment  of  his  death,  but  that  the  box  shall  always  be 
full  of  money.  Still  later  biographers  improved  the  account 
further,  declaring-  that  Xavier  promised  Vellio  that  the 
strong  box  should  always  contain  money  sufficient  for  all  his 
needs.  In  that  warm  and  uncritical  atmosphere  this  and 
other  legends  grew  rapidly,  obedient  to  much  the  same  laws 
which  govern  the  evolution  of  fairy  tales.* 

In  1682,  one  hundred  and  thirty  years  after  Xavier's 
death,  appeared  his  biography  by  Father  Bouhours ;  and 
this  became  a  classic.  In  it  the  old  miracles  of  all  kinds 
were  enormously  multiplied,  and  many  new  ones  given. 
Miracles  few  and  small  in  Tursellinus  became  many  and 
great  in  Bouhours.  In  Tursellinus,  Xavier  during  his  life 
saves  one  person  from  drowning",  in  Bouhours  he  saves  dur- 
ing his  life  three  ;  in  Tursellinus,  Xavier  during  his  life  raises 
four  persons  from  the  dead,  in  Bouhours  fourteen  ;  in  Tur- 
sellinus there  is  one  miraculous  supply  of  water,  in  Bou- 
hours three ;  in  Tursellinus  there  is  no  miraculous  draught 
of  fishes,  in  Bouhours  there  is  one  ;  in  Tursellinus,  Xavier  is 
transfigured  twice,  in  Bouhours  five  times :  and  so  throuo-h 
a  long  series  of  miracles  which,  in  the  earlier  lives  appearing 
either  not  at  all  or  in  very  moderate  form,  are  greatly  in- 
creased and  enlarged  by  Tursellinus,  and  finally  enormously 
amplified  and  multiplied  by  Father  Bouhours. 

*  The  writer  in  the  Catholic  World,  already  mentioned,  rather  rashly  asserts 
that  there  is  no  such  Life  of  Xavier  as  that  I  have  above  quoted.  The  reverend 
Jesuit  father  has  evidently  glanced  over  the  bibliographies  of  Carayon  and  De 
Backer,  and,  not  finding  it  there  under  the  name  of  Vitelleschi,  has  spared  himself 
further  trouble.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  book  may  be  seen  by  him  in  the 
library  of  Cornell  University.  Its  full  title  is  as  follows:  Compendio  della  Vita 
del  S.  P.  Francesco  Xaverio  della  Compagnia  di  Giesu,  Canonizato  con  S.  Ignatio 
Fan  da  tore  dell'  istessa  Religione  dalla  Santita  di  A7.  S.  Gregorio  XV.  Composto,  e 
dato  in  luce  per  ordine  del  Reverendiss.  P.  Mutio  Vitelleschi  Preposito  Generate 
della  Comp.  di  Giesu.  In  Venetia,  MDCXXIT,  Appresso  Antonio  Pinelli.  Con 
Licenza  de'  Superiori.  My  critic  hazards  a  guess  that  the  book  may  be  a  later 
edition  of  Torsellino  (Tursellinus),  but  here  again  he  is  wrong.  It  is  entirely  a  dif- 
ferent book,  giving  in  its  preface  a  list  of  sources  comprising  eleven  authorities 
besides  Torsellino. 


GROWTH    OF    LEGENDS   OF    HEALING.  17 

And  here  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Bouhours,  writ- 
ing ninety  years  after  Tursellinus,  could  not  have  had  access 
to  any  new  sources.     Xavier  had  been  dead  one  hundred 
and  thirty  years,  and  of  course  all  the  natives  upon  whom 
he  had  wrought  his  miracles,  and  their  children  and  grand- 
children, were  gone.     It  can  not  then  be  claimed  that  Bou- 
hours had  the  advantage  of  any  new  witnesses,  nor  could  he 
have  had  anything  new  in  the  way  of  contemporary  writ- 
ings ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  missionaries  of  Xavier's  time 
wrote    nothing    regarding    his    miracles,   and    certainly  the 
ignorant  natives  of  India  and  Japan  did  not  commit  any  ac- 
count of  his  miracles  to  writing.     Nevertheless,  the  miracles 
of  healing  given  in  Bouhours  were  more  numerous  and  bril- 
liant than   ever.     But  there  was  far   more    than  this.     Al- 
though during  the  lifetime  of  Xavier  there  is  neither  in  his 
own  writings  nor  in  any  contemporary  account  any  assertion 
of  a  resurrection  from  the  dead   wrought  by  him,  we  find 
that  shortly  after  his  death    stories   of    such  resurrections 
began  to  appear.      A  simple    statement   of    the  growth  of 
these  may   throw  some  light  on    the  evolution  of  miracu- 
lous accounts  generally.     At  first  it  was  affirmed  that  some 
people  at  Cape  Comorin  said  that  he  had  raised  one  person  ; 
then  it  was  said  that  there  were  two  persons ;  then  in  vari- 
ous authors— Emanuel  Acosta,  in  his  commentaries  written 
as  an  afterthought  nearly  twenty  years  after  Xavier's  death, 
De   Quadros,  and    others— the   story  wavers    between  one 
and  two  cases  ;  finally,  in  the  time  of  Tursellinus,  four  cases 
had  been  developed.     In  1622,  at  the  canonization  proceed- 
ings, three  were  mentioned  ;  but  by  the  time  of  Father  Bou- 
hours there  were    fourteen— all    raised    from    the   dead  by 
Xavier  himself  during  his  lifetime — and  the  name,  place,  and 
circumstances  are  given  with  much  detail  in  each  case.* 


*  The  writer  in  the  Catholic  World,  already  referred  to,  has  based  an  attack 
here  upon  a  misconception — I  will  not  call  it  a  deliberate  misrepresentation — of  his 
own  by  stating  that  these  resurrections  occurred  after  Xavier's  death,  and  were 
due  to  his  intercession  or  the  use  of  his  relics.  This  statement  of  the  Jesuit  father 
is  utterly  without  foundation,  as  a  simple  reference  to  Bouhours  will  show.  I  take 
the  liberty  of  commending  to  his  attention  The  Life  of  St.  Frauds  Xavier,  by 
Father  Dominic  Bouhours,  translated  by  James  Dryden,  Dublin,  1S38.  For  ex- 
amples of  raising  the  dead  by  the  saint  during  his  lifetime,  see  pp.  69,  82,  93,  III, 
218,  307,  316,  321 — fourteen  cases  in  all. 
30 


1 8  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

It  seems  to  have  been  felt  as  somewhat  strange  at  first 
that  Xavier  had  never  alluded  to  any  of  these  wonderful 
miracles ;  but  ere  long  a  subsidiary  legend  was  developed, 
to  the  effect  that  one  of  the  brethren  asked  him  one  day  if 
he  had  raised  the  dead,  whereat  he  blushed  deeply  and 
cried  out  against  the  idea,  saying :  "  And  so  I  am  said  to 
have  raised  the  dead  !  What  a  misleading  man  I  am  !  Some 
men  brought  a  youth  to  me  just  as  if  he  were  dead,  who, 
when  I  commanded  him  to  arise  in  the  name  of  Christ, 
straightway  arose." 

Noteworthy  is  the  evolution  of  other  miracles.  Tursel- 
linus,  writing  in  1 594,  tells  us  that  on  the  voyage  from  Goa 
to  Malacca,  Xavier  having  left  the  ship  and  gone  upon  an 
island,  was  afterward  found  by  the  persons  sent  in  search  of 
him  so  deeply  absorbed  in  prayer  as  to  be  unmindful  of  all 
things  about  him.  But  in  the  next  century  Father  Bou- 
hours  develops  the  story  as  follows :  "  The  servants  found 
the  man  of  God  raised  from  the  ground  into  the  air,  his  eyes 
fixed  upon  heaven,  and  rays  of  light  about  his  countenance." 

Instructive,  also,  is  a  comparison  between  the  successive 
accounts  of  his  noted  miracle  among  the  Badages  at  Travan- 
core,  in  1544.  Xavier  in  his  letters  makes  no  reference  to 
anything  extraordinary;  and  Emanuel  Acosta,  in  1 57 1,  de- 
clares simply  that  "  Xavier  threw  himself  into  the  midst  of 
the  Christians,  that  reverencing  him  they  might  spare  the 
rest."  The  inevitable  evolution  of  the  miraculous  goes  on  ; 
and  twenty  years  later  Tursellinus  tells  us  that,  at  the  on- 
slaught of  the  Badages,  "they  could  not  endure  the  majesty 
of  his  countenance  and  the  splendour  and  rays  which  issued 
from  his  eyes,  and  out  of  reverence  for  him  they  spared  the 
others."  The  process  of  incubation  still  goes  on  during 
ninety  )Tears  more,  and  then  comes  Father  Bouhours's  ac- 
count. Having  given  Xavier's  prayer  on  the  battlefield,  Bou- 
hours  goes  on  to  say  that  the  saint,  crucifix  in  hand,  rushed 
at  the  head  of  the  people  toward  the  plain  where  the  enemy 
was  marching,  and  "  said  to  them  in  a  threatening  voice,  '  I 
forbid  you  in  the  name  of  the  living  God  to  advance  farther, 
and  on  His  part  command  you  to  return  in  the  way  you 
came.'  These  few  words  cast  a  terror  into  the  minds  of 
those  soldiers  who  were  at  the  head  of  the  army  ;  they  re- 


GROWTH   OF   LEGENDS   OF   HEALING.  19 

mained  confounded  and  without  motion.  They  who  marched 
afterward,  seeing  that  the  foremost  did  not  advance,  asked 
the  reason  of  it.  The  answer  was  returned  from  the  front 
ranks  that  they  had  before  their  eyes  an  unknown  person 
habited  in  black,  of  more  than  human  stature,  of  terrible 
aspect,  and  darting  fire  from  his  eyes.  .  .  .  They  were  seized 
with  amazement  at  the  sight,  and  all  of  them  fled  in  pre- 
cipitate confusion." 

Curious,  too,  is  the  after-growth  of  the  miracle  of  the 
crab  restoring  the  crucifix.  In  its  first  form  Xavier  lost  the 
crucifix  in  the  sea,  and  the  earlier  biographers  dwell  on  the 
sorrow  which  he  showed  in  consequence  ;  but  the  later  his- 
torians declare  that  the  saint  threw  the  crucifix  into  the  sea 
in  order  to  still  a  tempest,  and  that,  after  his  safe  getting  to 
land,  a  crab  brought  it  to  him  on  the  shore.  In  this  form 
we  find  it  among  illustrations  of  books  of  devotion  in  the 
next  century. 

But  perhaps  the  best  illustration  of  this  evolution  of 
Xavier's  miracles  is  to  be  found  in  the  growth  of  another 
legend  ;  and  it  is  especially  instructive  because  it  grew 
luxuriantly  despite  the  fact  that  it  was  utterly  contradicted 
in  all  parts  of  Xavier's  writings  as  well  as  in  the  letters  of 
his  associates  and  in  the  work  of  the  Jesuit  father,  Joseph 
Acosta. 

Throughout  his  letters,  from  first  to  last,  Xavier  con- 
stantly dwells  upon  his  difficulties  with  the  various  languages 
of  the  different  tribes  among  whom  he  went.  He  tells  us 
how  he  surmounted  these  difficulties  :  sometimes  by  learn- 
ing just  enough  of  a  language  to  translate  into  it  some  of 
the  main  Church  formulas ;  sometimes  by  getting  the  help 
of  others  to  patch  together  some  pious  teachings  to  be 
learned  by  rote  ;  sometimes  by  employing  interpreters ; 
and  sometimes  by  a  mixture  of  various  dialects,  and  even  by 
signs.  On  one  occasion  he  tells  us  that  a  very  serious  diffi- 
culty arose,  and  that  his  voyage  to  China  was  delayed  be- 
cause, among  other  things,  the  interpreter  he  had  engaged 
had  failed  to  meet  him. 

In  various  Lives  which  appeared  between  the  time  of  his 
death  and  his  canonization  this  difficulty  is  much  dwelt 
upon;  but  during  the  canonization  proceedings  at  Rome,  in 


2o  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

the  speeches  then  made,  and  finally  in  the  papal  bull,  great 
stress  was  laid  upon  the  fact  that  Xavier  possessed  the  gift 
of  tongues.  It  was  declared  that  he  spoke  to  the  various 
tribes  with  ease  in  their  own  languages.  This  legend  of 
Xavier's  miraculous  gift  of  tongues  was  especially  mentioned 
in  the  papal  bull,  and  was  solemnly  given  forth  by  the  pon- 
tiff as  an  infallible  statement  to  be  believed  by  the  univer- 
sal Church.  Gregory  XV  having  been  prevented  by  death 
from  issuing  the  Bull  of  Canonisation,  it  was  finally  issued  by 
Urban  VIII ;  and  there  is  much  food  for  reflection  in  the  fact 
that  the  same  Pope  who  punished  Galileo,  and  was  deter- 
mined that  the  Inquisition  should  not  allow  the  world  to 
believe  that  the  earth  revolves  about  the  sun,  thus  solemnly 
ordered  the  world,  under  pain  of  damnation,  to  believe  in 
Xavier's  miracles,  including  his  "gift  of  tongues,"  and  the 
return  of  the  crucifix  by  the  pious  crab.  But  the  legend 
was  developed  still  further:  Father  Bouhours  tells  us,  "  The 
holy  man  spoke  very  well  the  language  of  those  barbarians 
without  having  learned  it,  and  had  no  need  of  an  interpreter 
when  he  instructed."  And,  finally,  in  our  own  time,  the 
Rev.  Father  Coleridge,  speaking  of  the  saint  among  the 
natives,  says,  "  He  could  speak  the  language  excellently, 
though  he  had  never  learned  it." 

In  the  early  biography,  Tursellinus  writes :  "  Nothing 
was  a  greater  impediment  to  him  than  his  ignorance  of  the 
Japanese  tongues ;  for,  ever  and  anon,  when  some  uncouth 
expression  offended  their  fastidious  and  delicate  ears,  the 
awkward  speech  of  Francis  was  a  cause  of  laughter."  But 
Father  Bouhours,  a  century  later,  writing  of  Xavier  at  the 
same  period,  says,  "  He  preached  in  the  afternoon  to  the 
Japanese  in  their  language,  but  so  naturally  and  with  so 
much  ease  that  he  could  not  be  taken  for  a  foreigner." 

And  finally,  in  1872,  Father  Coleridge,  of  the  Society  of 
Jesus,  speaking  of  Xavier  at  this  time,  says,  "  He  spoke 
freely,  flowingly,  elegantly,  as  if  he  had  lived  in  Japan  all 
his  life." 

Nor  was  even  this  sufficient :  to  make  the  legend  com- 
plete, it  was  finally  declared  that,  when  Xavier  addressed 
the  natives  of  various  tribes,  each  heard  the  sermon  in  his 
own  language  in  which  he  was  born. 


GROWTH   OF   LEGENDS   OF   HEALING.  2I 

All  this,  as  we  have  seen,  directly  contradicts  not  only 
the  plain  statements  of  Xavier  himself,  and  various  incidental 
testimonies  in  the  letters  of  his  associates,  but  the  explicit 
declaration  of  Father  Joseph  Acosta.  The  latter  historian 
dwells  especially  on  the  labour  which  Xavier  was  obliged  to 
bestow  on  the  study  of  the  Japanese  and  other  languages, 
and  says,  "  Even  if  he  had  been  endowed  with  the  apostolic 
gift  of  tongues,  he  could  not  have  spread  more  widely  the 
glory  of  Christ."  * 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  attribute  to  the  orators  and 
biographers  generally  a  conscious  attempt  to  deceive.  The 
simple  fact  is,  that  as  a  rule  they  thought,  spoke,  and  wrote 
in  obedience  to  the  natural  laws  which  govern  the  luxuriant 
growth  of  myth  and  legend  in  the  warm  atmosphere  of  love 
and  devotion  which  constantly  arises  about  great  religious 
leaders  in  times  when  men  have  little  or  no  knowledge  of 
natural  law,  when  there  is  little  care  for  scientific  evidence, 
and  when  he  who  believes  most  is  thought  most  merito- 
rious, f 

*  For  the  evolution  of  the  miracles  of  Xavier,  see  his  Letters,  with  Life,  pub- 
lished by  Leon  Pages,  Paris,  1855  ;  also  Maffei,  Historiarum  Lndicarum  libri 
xvi,  Venice,  1589  ;  also  the  lives  by  Tursellinus,  various  editions,  beginning  with 
that  of  1594  ;  Vitelleschi,  1622  ;  Bouhours,  1682  ;  Massei,  second  edition,  1682 
(Rome),  and  others  ;  Bartoli,  Baltimore,  1868  ;  Coleridge,  1872.  In  addition  to 
these,  I  ha/e  compared,  for  a  more  extended  discussion  of  this  subject  hereafter,  a 
very  great  number  of  editions  of  these  and  other  biographies  of  the  saint,  with 
speeches  at  the  canonization,  the  bull  of  Gregory  XV,  various  books  of  devotion, 
and  a  multitude  of  special  writings,  some  of  them  in  manuscript,  upon  the  glories 
of  the  saint,  including  a  large  mass  of  material  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Munich 
and  in  the  British  Museum.  I  have  relied  entirely  upon  Catholic  authors,  and 
have  not  thought  it  worth  while  to  consult  any  Protestant  author.  The  illustration 
of  the  miracle  of  the  crucifix  and  crab  in  its  final  form  is  given  in  La  D/votion  de 
Dix  Vendredis  d  V LLonneur  de  St.  Francois  Xavier,  Bruxelles,  1699,  Fig.  24  :  the 
pious  crab  is  represented  as  presenting  the  crucifix  which  by  a  journey  of  forty 
leagues  he  has  brought  from  the  depths  of  the  ocean  to  Xavier,  who  walks  upon  the 
shore.  The  book  is  in  the  Cornell  University  Library.  For  the  letter  of  King 
John  to  Barreto,  see  Leon  Pages's  Lettres  de  St.  Francois  Xavier,  Paris,  1855,  vol. 
ii,  p.  465.  For  the  miracle  among  the  Badages,  compare  Tursellinus,  lib.  ii,  c.  x, 
p.  16,  with  Bouhours,  Dryden's  translation,  pp.  146,  147.  For  the  miracle  of  the  gift 
of  tongues,  in  its  higher  development,  see  Bouhours,  p.  235,  and  Coleridge,  vol.  i, 
pp.  172  and  208  ;  and  as  to  Xavier's  own  account,  see  Coleridge,  vol.  i,  pp.  151, 
154,  and  vol.  ii,  p.  551. 

f  Instances  can  be  given  of  the  same  evolution  of  miraculous  legend  in  our  own 
time.     To  say  nothing  of  the  sacred  fountain  at  La  Salette,  which  preserves  its 


22  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

These  examples  will  serve  to  illustrate  the  process  which 
in  thousands  of  cases  has  gone  on  from  the  earliest  days  of 

healing  powers  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  miracle  which  gave  rise  to  them  has 
twice  been  pronounced  fraudulent  by  the  French  courts,  and  to  pass  without  notice 
a  multitude  of  others,  not  only  in  Catholic  but  in  Protestant  countries,  the  present 
writer  may  allude  to  one  which  in  the  year  1893  came  under  his  own  observation. 
On  arriving  in  St.  Petersburg  to  begin  an  official  residence  there,  his  attention  was 
arrested  by  various  portraits  of  a  priest  of  the  Russo-Greek  Church  ;  they  were 
displayed  in  shop  windows  and  held  an  honoured  place  in  many  private  dwell- 
ings. These  portraits  ranged  from  lifelike  photographs,  which  showed  a  plain, 
shrewd,  kindly  face,  to  those  which  were  idealized  until  they  bore  a  strong  resem- 
blance to  the  conventional  representations  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  On  making  in- 
quiries, the  writer  found  that  these  portraits  represented  Father  Ivan,  of  Cronstadt, 
a  priest  noted  for  his  good  deeds,  and  very  widely  believed  to  be  endowed  with  the 
power  of  working  miracles. 

One  day,  in  one  of  the  most  brilliant  reception  rooms  of  the  northern  capital, 
the  subject  of  Father  Ivan's  miracles  having  been  introduced,  a  gentleman  in  very 
high  social  position  and  entirely  trustworthy  spoke  as  follows  :  "  There  is  something 
very  surprising  about  these  miracles.  I  am  slow  to  believe  in  them,  but  I  know  the 
following  to  be  a  fact :  The  late  Metropolitan  Archbishop  of  St.  Petersburg  loved 
quiet,  and  was  very  averse  to  anything  which  could  possibly  cause  scandal.  Hear- 
ing of  Father  Ivan's  miracles,  he  summoned  him  to  his  presence  and  solemnly  com- 
manded him  to  abstain  from  all  the  things  which  had  given  rise  to  his  reported 
miracles,  and  with  this  injunction  dismissed  him.  Hardly  had  the  priest  left  the 
room  when  the  archbishop  was  struck  with  blindness  and  remained  in  this  condi- 
tion until  the  priest  returned  and  removed  his  blindness  by  intercessory  prayers." 
When  the  present  writer  asked  the  person  giving  this  account  if  he  directly  knew 
these  facts,  he  replied  that  he  was,  of  course,  not  present  when  the  miracle  was 
wrought,  but  that  he  had  the  facts  immediately  from  persons  who  knew  all  the 
parties  concerned  and  were  cognizant  directly  of  the  circumstances  of  the  case. 

Some  time  afterward,  the  present  writer  being  at  an  afternoon  reception  at  one 
of  the  greater  embassies,  the  same  subject  was  touched  upon,  when  an  eminent  gen- 
eral spoke  as  follows :  "I  am  not  inclined  to  believe  in  miracles,  in  fact  am  rather 
sceptical,  but  the  proofs  of  those  wrought  by  Father  Ivan  are  overwhelming."  He 
then  went  on  to  say  that  the  late  Metropolitan  Archbishop  was  a  man  who  loved 
quiet  and  disliked  scandal  ;  that  on  this  account  he  had  summoned  Father  Ivan  to 
his  palace  and  ordered  him  to  put  an  end  to  the  conduct  which  had  caused  the 
reports  concerning  his  miraculous  powers,  and  then,  with  a  wave  of  the  arm,  had 
dismissed  him.  The  priest  left  the  room,  and  from  that  moment  the  archbishop's 
arm  was  paralyzed,  and  it  remained  so  until  the  penitent  prelate  summoned  the 
priest  again,  by  whose  prayers  the  arm  was  restored  to  its  former  usefulness.  There 
was  present  at  the  time  another  person  besides  the  writer  who  had  heard  the  pre- 
vious statement  as  to  the  blindness  of  the  archbishop,  and  on  their  both  question- 
ing the  general  if  he  were  sure  that  the  archbishop's  arm  was  paralyzed,  as  stated, 
he  declared  that  he  could  not  doubt  it,  as  he  had  it  directly  from  persons  entirely 
trustworthy,  who  were  cognizant  of  all  the  facts. 

Some  time  later,  the  present  writer,  having  an  interview  with  the  most  eminent 
lay  authority  in  the  Greek  Church,  a  functionary  whose  duties  had  brought  him  into 


THE    MEDLEVAL   MIRACLES   OF  HEALING. 


23 


the  Church  until  a  very  recent  period.  Everywhere  mi- 
raculous cures  became  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception 
throughout  Christendom. 


III.    THE   MEDLEVAL   MIRACLES   OF    HEALING   CHECK 
MEDICAL   SCIENCE. 

So  it  was  that,  throughout  antiquity,  during  the  early 
history  of  the  Church,  throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  and  in- 
deed down  to  a  comparatively  recent  period,  testimony  to 
miraculous  interpositions  which  would  now  be  laughed  at 
by  a  schoolboy  was  accepted  by  the  leaders  of  thought. 
St.  Augustine  was  certainly  one  of  the  strongest  minds  in 
the  early  Church,  and  yet  we  find  him  mentioning,  with 
much  seriousness,  a  story  that  sundry  innkeepers  of  his  time 
put  a  drug  into  cheese  which  metamorphosed  travellers  into 
domestic  animals,  and  asserting  that  the  peacock  is  so  fa- 
voured by  the  Almighty  that  its  flesh  will -not  decay,  and  that 
he  has  tested  it  and  knows  this  to  be  a  fact.  With  such  a 
disposition  regarding  the  wildest  stories,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  assertion  of  St.  Gregory  of  Nazianzen,  during  the 
second  century,  as  to  the  cures  wrought  by  the  martyrs 
Cosmo  and  Damian,  was  echoed  from  all  parts  of  Europe 
until  every  hamlet  had  its  miracle-working  saint  or  relic. 

The  literature  of  these  miracles  is  simply  endless.  To 
take  our  own  ancestors  alone,  no  one  can  read  the  Ecclesias- 
tical History  of  Bede,  or  Abbot  Samson's  Miracles  of  St.  Ed- 
mund, or  the  accounts  given  by  Eadmer  and  Osbern  of  the 
miracles  of  St.  Dunstan,  or  the  long  lists  of  those  wrought 
by  Thomas  a  Becket,  or  by  any  other  in  the  army  of  Eng- 

almost  daily  contact  with  the  late  archbishop,  asked  him  which  of  these  stories  was 
correct.  This  gentleman  answered  immediately  :  "  Neither  ;  I  saw  the  archbishop 
constantly,  and  no  such  event  occurred  :  he  was  never  paralyzed  and  never  blind." 
The  same  gentleman  then  went  on  to  say  that,  in  his  belief,  Father  Ivan  had 
shown  remarkable  powers  in  healing  the  sick,  and  the  greatest  charily  in  relieving 
the  distressed.  It  was  made  clearly  evident  that  Father  Ivan  is  a  saintlike  man, 
devoted  to  the  needy  and  distressed  and  exercising  an  enormous  influence  over 
them — an  influence  so  great  that  crowds  await  him  whenever  he  visits  the  capital. 
In  the  atmosphere  of  Russian  devotion  myths  and  legends  grow  luxuriantly  about 
him,  nor  is  belief  in  him  confined  to  the  peasant  class.  In  the  autumn  of  1894  he 
was  summoned  to  the  bedside  of  the  Emperor  Alexander  III.  Unfortunately  for 
the  peace  of  Europe,  his  intercession  at  that  time  proved  unavailing. 


24  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

lish  saints,  without  seeing  the  perfect  naturalness  of  this 
growth.  This  evolution  of  miracle  in  all  parts  of  Europe 
came  out  of  a  vast  preceding  series  of  beliefs,  extending  not 
merely  through  the  early  Church  but  far  back  into  pagan- 
ism. Just  as  formerly  patients  were  cured  in  the  temples  of 
iEsculapius,  so  they  were  cured  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  so 
they  are  cured  now  at  the  shrines  of  saints.  Just  as  the 
ancient  miracles  were  solemnly  attested  by  votive  tablets, 
giving  names,  dates,  and  details,  and  these  tablets  hung 
before  the  images  of  the  gods,  so  the  mediaeval  miracles 
were  attested  by  similar  tablets  hung  before  the  images  of 
the  saints ;  and  so  they  are  attested  to-day  by  similar  tablets 
hung  before  the  images  of  Our  Lady  of  La  Salette  or  of 
Lourdes.  Just  as  faith  in  such  miracles  persisted,  in  spite  of 
the  small  percentage  of  cures  at  those  ancient  places  of  heal- 
ing, so  faith  persists  to-day,  despite  the  fact  that  in  at  least 
ninety  per  cent  of  the  cases  at  Lourdes  prayers  prove  un- 
availing. As  a  rule,  the  miracles  of  the  sacred  books  were 
taken  as  models,  and  each  of  those  given  by  the  sacred 
chroniclers  was  repeated  during  the  early  ages  of  the  Church 
and  through  the  mediaeval  period  with  endless  variations  of 
circumstance,  but  still  with  curious  fidelity  to  the  original 
type. 

It  should  be  especially  kept  in  mind  that,  while  the  vast 
majority  of  these  were  doubtless  due  to  the  myth-making 
faculty  and  to  that  development  of  legends  which  always 
goes  on  in  ages  ignorant  of  the  relation  between  physical 
causes  and  effects,  some  of  the  miracles  of  healing  had  un- 
doubtedly some  basis  in  fact.  We  in  modern  times  have  seen 
too  many  cures  performed  through  influences  exercised  upon 
the  imagination,  such  as  those  of  the  Jansenists  at  the  Ceme- 
tery of  St.  Medard,  of  the  Ultramontanes  at  La  Salette  and 
Lourdes,  of  the  Russian  Father  Ivan  at  St.  Petersburg,  and 
of  various  Protestant  sects  at  Old  Orchard  and  elsewhere, 
as  well  as  at  sundry  camp  meetings,  to  doubt  that  some 
cures,  more  or  less  permanent,  were  wrought  by  sainted 
personages  in  the  early  Church  and  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages.* 

*  For  the  story  of  travellers  converted  into  domestic  animals,  see  St.  Augustine, 
De  Civ.  Dei,  liber  xviii,  chaps,  xvii,  xviii,  in  Migne,  torn,  xli,  p.  574.     For  Gregory 


THE    MEDIAEVAL   MIRACLES   OF   HEALING.  25 

There  are  undoubtedly  serious  lesions  which  yield  to 
profound  emotion  and  vigorous  exertion  born  of  persuasion, 
confidence,  or  excitement.  The  wonderful  power  of  the 
mind  over  the  body  is  known  to  every  observant  student. 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  dwells  upon  the  fact  that  intense  feel- 
ing or  passion  may  bring  out  great  muscular  force.  Dr. 
Berdoe  reminds  us  that  "  a  gouty  man  who  has  long  hobbled 
about  on  his  crutch,  finds  his  legs  and  power  to  run  with 
them  if  pursued  by  a  wild  bull  "  ;  and  that  "  the  feeblest  in- 
valid, under  the  influence  of  delirium  or  other  strong  excite- 
ment, will  astonish  her  nurse  by  the  sudden  accession  of 
strength."* 

But  miraculous  cures  were  not  ascribed  to  persons  mere- 
ly. Another  growth,  developed  by  the  early  Church 
mainly  from  germs  in  our  sacred  books,  took  shape  in  mira- 
cles wrought  by  streams,  by  pools  of  water,  and  especially 
by  relics.     Here,  too,  the  old  types  persisted,  and  just  as  we 


of  Nazianzen  and  the  similarity  of  these  Christian  cures  in  general  character  to 
those  wrought  in  the  temples  of  ^sculapius,  see  Sprengel,  vol.  ii,  pp.  145,  140. 
For  the  miracles  wrought  at  the  shrine  of  St.  Edmund,  see  Samsonis  Abbatis  Opus 
de  Miraculis  Sancti  Mdmundi,  in  the  Master  of  the  Rolls'  series,  passim,  but  es- 
pecially chaps,  xiv  and  xix  for  miracles  of  healing  wrought  on  those  who  drank  out 
of  the  saint's  cup.  For  the  mighty  works  of  St.  Dunstan,  see  the  Mirac.  Sancti 
Dunstani,  auctore  Eadmero  and  auctore  Osberno,  in  the  Master  of  the  Rolls'  series. 
As  to  Becket,  see  the  Materials  for  the  History  of  Thomas  Becket,  in  the  same 
series,  and  especially  the  lists  of  miracles — the  mere  index  of  them  in  the  first  vol- 
ume requires  thirteen  octavo  pages.  For  St.  Martin  of  Tours,  see  the  Guizot  collec- 
tion of  French  Chronicles.  For  miracle  and  shrine  cures  chronicled  by  Bede,  see  his 
Ecclesiastical  History,  passim,  but  especially  from  page  1 10  to  page  267.  For  similar- 
ity between  the  ancient  custom  of  allowing  invalids  to  sleep  in  the  temples  of  Serapis 
and  the  mediaeval  custom  of  having  them  sleep  in  the  church  of  St.  Antony  of  Padua 
and  other  churches,  see  Meyer,  Aberglaube  des  Mittelalters,  Basel,  1S84,  chap.  iv. 
For  the  effect  of  "  the  vivid  belief  in  supernatural  action  which  attaches  itself  to  the 
tombs  of  the  saints,"  etc.,  as  "  a  psychic  agent  of  great  value,"  see  Littre,  Medecine 
et  M/decins,  p.  13 1.  For  the  Jansenist  miracles  at  Paris,  see  La  Ve'ritd  des  Mira- 
cles ope" re's  par  V Intercession  de  M.  de  Paris,  par  Montgeron,  Utrecht,  1737,  and 
especially  the  cases  of  Mary  Anne  Couronneau,  Philippe  Sergent,  and  Gautier  de 
Pezenas.  For  some  very  thoughtful  remarks  as  to  the  worthlessness  of  the  testi- 
mony to  miracles  presented  during  the  canonization  proceedings  at  Rome,  see 
Maury,  Ligendes  Pienses,  pp.  4-7. 

*  For  the  citation  in  the  text,  as  well  as  for  a  brief  but  remarkably  valuable 
discussion  of  the  power  of  the  mind  over  the  body  in  disease,  see  Dr.  Berdoe's 
Medical  View  of  the  Miracles  at  Lourdes,  in  The  Nineteenth  Century  for  Octo- 
ber, 1895. 


26  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

find  holy  and  healing  wells,  pools,  and  streams  in  all  other 
ancient  religions,  so  we  find  in  the  evolution  of  our  own  such 
examples  as  Naaman  the  Syrian  cured  of  leprosy  by  bathing 
in  the  river  Jordan,  the  blind  man  restored  to  sight  by  wash- 
ing in  the  pool  of  Siloam,  and  the  healing  of  those  who 
touched  the  bones  of  Elisha,  the  shadow  of  St.  Peter,  or  the 
handkerchief  of  St.  Paul. 

St.  Cyril,  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Augustine,  and  other  great 
fathers  of  the  early  Church,  sanctioned  the  belief  that  similar 
efficacy  was  to  be  found  in  the  relics  of  the  saints  of  their 
time ;  hence,  St.  Ambrose  declared  that  "  the  precepts  of 
medicine  are  contrary  to  celestial  science,  watching,  and 
prayer,"  and  we  find  this  statement  reiterated  from  time  to 
time  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  From  this  idea  was 
evolved  that  fetichism  which  we  shall  see  for  ages  standing 
in  the  way  of  medical  science. 

Theology,  developed  in  accordance  with  this  idea,  threw 
about  all  cures,  even  those  which  resulted  from  scientific 
effort,  an  atmosphere  of  supernaturalism.  The  vividness 
with  which  the  accounts  of  miracles  in  the  sacred  books 
were  realized  in  the  early  Church  continued  the  idea  of  mi- 
raculous intervention  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
testimony  of  the  great  fathers  of  the  Church  to  the  contin- 
uance of  miracles  is  overwhelming ;  but  everything  shows 
that  they  so  fully  expected  miracles  on  the  slightest  occasion 
as  to  require  nothing  which  in  these  days  would  be  regarded 
as  adequate  evidence. 

In  this  atmosphere  of  theologic  thought  medical  science 
was  at  once  checked.  The  School  of  Alexandria,  under  the 
influence  first  of  Jews  and  later  of  Christians,  both  perme- 
ated with  Oriental  ideas,  and  taking  into  their  theory  of 
medicine  demons  and  miracles,  soon  enveloped  everything 
in  mysticism.  In  the  Byzantine  Empire  of  the  East  the 
same  cause  produced  the  same  effect ;  the  evolution  of  as- 
certained truth  in  medicine,  begun  by  Hippocrates  and  con- 
tinued by  Herophilus,  seemed  lost  forever.  Medical  sci- 
ence, trying  to  advance,  was  like  a  ship  becalmed  in  the 
Sargasso  Sea:  both  the  atmosphere  about  it  and  the  me- 
dium through  which  it  must  move  resisted  all  progress. 
Instead  of    reliance  upon   observation,   experience,   experi- 


"PASTORAL   MEDICINE"  CHECKS   SCIENTIFIC   EFFORT. 


27 


ment,  and  thought,  attention  was  turned   toward  supernat- 
ural agencies.* 


IV.  THE   ATTRIBUTION   OF   DISEASE  TO   SATANIC   INFLUENCE. 
—"PASTORAL   MEDICINE"  CHECKS   SCIENTIFIC   EFFORT. 

Especially  prejudicial  to  a  true  development  of  medical 
science  among  the  first  Christians  was  their  attribution  of 
disease  to  diabolic  influence.  As  we  have  seen,  this  idea 
had  come  from  far,  and,  having  prevailed  in  Chaldea,  Egypt, 
and  Persia,  had  naturally  entered  into  the  sacred  books  of 
the  Hebrews.  Moreover,  St.  Paul  had  distinctly  declared 
that  the  gods  of  the  heathen  were  devils  ;  and  everywhere 
the  early  Christians  saw  in  disease  the  malignant  work  of 
these  dethroned  powers  of  evil.  The  Gnostic  and  Mani- 
chasan  struggles  had  ripened  the  theologic  idea  that,  although 
at  times  diseases  are  punishments  by  the  Almighty,  the  main 
agency  in  them  is  Satanic.  The  great  fathers  and  renowned 
leaders  of  the  early  Church  accepted  and  strengthened  this 
idea.  Origen  said  :  "  It  is  demons  which  produce  famine, 
unfruitfulness,  corruptions  of  the  air,  pestilences  ;  they  hover 
concealed  in  clouds  in  the  lower  atmosphere,  and  are  at- 
tracted by  the  blood  and  incense  which  the  heathen  offer  to 
them  as  gods."  St.  Augustine  said  :  "  All  diseases  of  Chris- 
tians are  to  be  ascribed  to  these  demons ;  chiefly  do  they 
torment  fresh-baptized  Christians,  yea,  even  the  guiltless, 
newborn  infants."  Tertullian  insisted  that  a  malevolent 
angel  is  in  constant  attendance  upon  every  person.  Gregory 
of  Nazianzus  declared  that  bodily  pains  are  provoked  by 
demons,  and  that  medicines  are  useless,  but  that  they  are 
often  cured  by  the  laying  on  of  consecrated  hands.  St. 
Nilus  and  St.  Gregory  of  Tours,  echoing  St.  Ambrose,  gave 
examples  to  show  the  sinfulness  of  resorting  to  medicine  in- 
stead of  trusting  to  the  intercession  of  saints. 

St.  Bernard,  in  a  letter  to  certain  monks,  warned  them 

*  For  the  mysticism  which  gradually  enveloped  the  School  of  Alexandria,  see 
Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire,  De  V Ecole  d'Alexa?idrie,  Paris,  1845,  vol.  vi,  p.  161 
For  the  effect  of  the  new  doctrines  on  the  Empire  of  the  East,  see  Sprengel,  vol.  ii, 
p.  240.  As  to  the  more  common  miracles  of  healing  and  the  acknowledgment  of 
non-Christian  miracles  of  healing  by  Christian  fathers,  see  Fort,  p.  84. 


28  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

that  to  seek  relief  from  disease  in  medicine  was  in  harmony 
neither  with  their  religion  nor  with  the  honour  and  purity 
of  their  order.  This  view  even  found  its  way  into  the  canon 
law,  which  declared  the  precepts  of  medicine  contrary  to 
Divine  knowledge.  As  a  rule,  the  leaders  of  the  Church 
discouraged  the  theory  that  diseases  are  due  to  natural 
causes,  and  most  of  them  deprecated  a  resort  to  surgeons 
and  physicians  rather  than  to  supernatural  means.* 

Out  of  these  and  similar  considerations  was  developed 
the  vast  system  of  "  pastoral  medicine,"  so  powerful  not  only 
through  the  Middle  Ages,  but  even  in  modern  times,  both 
among  Catholics  and  Protestants.  As  to  its  results,  we  must 
bear  in  mind  that,  while  there  is  no  need  to  attribute  the 
mass  of  stories  regarding  miraculous  cures  to  conscious 
fraud,  there  was  without  doubt,  at  a  later  period,  no  small 
admixture  of  belief  biased  by  self-interest,  with  much  pious 
invention  and  suppression  of  facts.  Enormous  revenues 
flowed  into  various  monasteries  and  churches  in  all  parts  of 
Europe  from  relics  noted  for  their  healing  powers.  Every 
cathedral,  every  great  abbey,  and  nearly  every  parish  church 
claimed  possession  of  healing  relics.  While,  undoubtedly,  a 
childlike  faith  was  at  the  bottom  of  this  belief,  there  came 
out  of  it  unquestionably  a  great  development  of  the  mer- 
cantile spirit.  The  commercial  value  of  sundry  relics  was 
often  very  high.  In  the  year  1056  a  French  ruler  pledged 
securities  to  the  amount  of  ten  thousand  solidi  for  the  pro- 
duction of  the   relics  of  St.  Just  and  St.  Pastor,  pending  a 

*  For  Chaldean,  Egyptian,  and  Persian  ideas  as  to  the  diabolic  origin  of  disease, 
see  authorities  already  cited,  especially  Maspero  and  Sayce.  For  Origen,  see  the 
Contra  Celsum,  lib.  viii,  chap.  xxxi.  For  Augustine,  see  De  Divinatione  Damonum, 
chap,  iii  (p.  585  of  Migne,  vol.  xl).  For  Tertullian  and  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  set 
citations  in  Sprengel  and  in  Fort,  p.  6.  For  St.  Nilus,  see  his  life,  in  the  Bollandise 
Acta  Sanctorum.  For  Gregory  of  Tours,  see  his  Historia  Francorum,  lib.  v,  cap. 
6,  and  his  De  Mirac.  S.  Martini,  lib.  ii,  cap.  60.  I  owe  these  citations  to  Mr.  Lea 
(History  of  the  Inquisition  of  the  Middle  Ages,  vol.  iii,  p.  410,  note).  For  the  letter 
of  St.  Bernard  to  the  monks  of  St.  Anastasius,  see  his  Epistola  in  Migne,  torn. 
182,  pp.  550,  551.  For  the  canon  law,  see  under  De  Consecratione,  dist.  v,  c.  xxi, 
"  Contraria  sunt  divinae  cognitioni  prascepta  medicinae  :  a  jejunio  revocant,  lucubrare 
non  sinunt,  ab  omni  intentione  meditationis  abducunt."  For  the  turning  of  the 
Greek  mythology  into  a  demonology  as  largely  due  to  St.  Paul,  see  I  Corinthians 
x,  20  :  "  The  things  which  the  Gentiles  sacrifice,  they  sacrifice  to  devils,  and  not  to 
God." 


"PASTORAL   MEDICINE"  CHECKS   SCIENTIFIC    EFFORT.      2Q 

legal  decision  regarding-  the  ownership  between  him  and 
the  Archbishop  of  Narbonne.  The  Emperor  of  Germany 
on  one  occasion  demanded,  as  a  sufficient  pledge  for  the 
establishment  of  a  city  market,  the  arm  of  St.  George.  The 
body  of  St.  Sebastian  brought  enormous  wealth  to  the  Ab- 
bey of  Soissons  ;  Rome,  Canterbury,  Treves,  Marburg,  every 
great  city,  drew  large  revenues  from  similar  sources,  and  the 
Venetian  Republic  ventured  very  considerable  sums  in  the 
purchase  of  relics. 

Naturally,  then,  corporations,  whether  lay  or  ecclesias- 
tical, which  drew  large  revenue  from  relics  looked  with  lit- 
tle favour  on  a  science  which  tended  to  discredit  their  in- 
vestments. 

Nowhere,  perhaps,  in  Europe  can  the  philosophy  of  this 
development  of  fetichism  be  better  studied  to-day  than  at 
Cologne.  At  the  cathedral,  preserved  in  a  magnificent 
shrine  since  about  the  twelfth  century,  are  the  skulls  of  the 
Three  Kings,  or  Wise  Men  of  the  East,  who,  guided  by  the 
star  of  Bethlehem,  brought  gifts  to  the  Saviour.  These 
relics  were  an  enormous  source  of  wealth  to  the  cathedral 
chapter  during  many  centuries.  But  other  ecclesiastical 
bodies  in  that  city  were  both  pious  and  shrewd,  and  so  we 
find  that  not  far  off,  at  the  church  of  St.  Gereon,  a  cemetery 
has  been  dug  up,  and  the  bones  distributed  over  the  walls 
as  the  relics  of  St.  Gereon  and  his  Theban  band  of  martyrs! 
Again,  at  the  neighbouring  church  of  St.  Ursula,  we  have 
the  later  spoils  of  another  cemetery,  covering  the  interior 
walls  of  the  church  as  the  bones  of  St.  Ursula  and  her  eleven 
thousand  virgin  martyrs:  the  fact  that  many  of  them,  as 
anatomists  now  declare,  are  the  bones  of  men  does  not  appear 
in  the  Middle  Ages  to  have  diminished  their  power  of  com- 
peting with  the  relics  at  the  other  shrines  in  healing  efficiency. 

No  error  in  the  choice  of  these  healing  means  seems  to 
have  diminished  their  efficacy.  When  Prof.  Buckland,  the 
eminent  osteologist  and  geologist,  discovered  that  the  relics 
of  St.  Rosalia  at  Palermo,  which  had  for  ages  cured  diseases 
and  warded  off  epidemics,  were  the  bones  of  a  goat,  this 
fact  caused  not  the  slightest  diminution  in  their  miraculous 
power. 

Other  developments  of  fetich  cure  were  no  less  discour- 


30 


FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 


aging-  to  the  evolution  of  medical  science.  Very  important 
among  these  was  the  Agnus  Dei,  or  piece  of  wax  from  the 
Paschal  candles,  stamped  with  the  figure  of  a  lamb  and  con- 
secrated by  the  Pope.  In  147 1  Pope  Paul  II  expatiated  to 
the  Church  on  the  efficacy  of  this  fetich  in  preserving  men 
from  fire,  shipwreck,  tempest,  lightning,  and  hail,  as  well  as 
in  assisting  women  in  childbirth  ;  and  he  reserved  to  him- 
self and  his  successors  the  manufacture  of  it.  Even  as  late 
as  1 5 17  Pope  Leo  X  issued,  for  a  consideration,  tickets  bear- 
ing a  cross  and  the  following  inscription  :  "  This  cross  meas- 
ured forty  times  makes  the  height  of  Christ  in  his  humanity. 
He  who  kisses  it  is  preserved  for  seven  days  from  falling- 
sickness,  apoplexy,  and  sudden  death." 

Naturally,  the  belief  thus  sanctioned  by  successive  heads 
of  the  Church,  infallible  in  all  teaching  regarding  faith  and 
morals,  created  a  demand  for  amulets  and  charms  of  all 
kinds ;  and  under  this  influence  we  find  a  reversion  to  old 
pagan  fetiches.  Nothing,  on  the  whole,  stood  more  con- 
stantly in  the  way  of  any  proper  development  of  medical  sci- 
ence than  these  fetich  cures,  whose  efficacy  was  based  on 
theological  reasoning  and  sanctioned  by  ecclesiastical  policy. 

It  would  be  expecting  too  much  from  human  nature  to 
imagine  that  pontiffs  who  derived  large  revenues  from  the 
sale  of  the  Agnus  Dei,  or  priests  who  derived  both  wealth 
and  honours  from  cures  wrought  at  shrines  under  their 
care,  or  lay  dignitaries  who  had  invested  heavily  in  relics, 
should  favour  the  development  of  any  science  which  under- 
mined their  interests.* 


*  See  Fort's  Medical  Economy  during  the  Middle  Ages,  pp.  2 1 1-2 13  ;  also  the 
Handbooks  of  Murray  and  Baedeker  for  North  Germany,  and  various  histories  of 
medicine  passim  ;  also  Collin  de  Plancy  and  scores  of  others.  For  the  discovery 
that  the  relics  of  St.  Rosalia  at  Palermo  are  simply  the  bones  of  a  goat,  see  Gordon, 
Life  of  Buck-land,  pp.  94-96.  For  an  account  of  the  Agnus  Dei,  see  Rydberg,  pp. 
62,  63  ;  and  for  "  Conception  Billets,"  pp.  64  and  65.  For  Leo  X's  tickets,  see 
Hausser  (professor  at  Heidelberg),  Period  of  the  Reformation,  English  translation, 
p.  17. 


THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO   ANATOMICAL   STUDIES.    3! 


V.    THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO   ANATOMICAL   STUDIES. 

Yet  a  more  serious  stumbling-block,  hindering  the  begin- 
nings of  modern  medicine  and  surgery,  was  a  theory  regard- 
ing the  unlawfulness  of  meddling  with  the  bodies  of  the 
dead.  This  theory,  like  so  many  others  which  the  Church 
cherished  as  peculiarly  its  own,  had  really  been  inherited 
from  the  old  pagan  civilizations.  So  strong  was  it  in  Egypt 
that  the  embalmer  was  regarded  as  accursed  ;  traces  of  it 
appear  in  Grseco-Roman  life,  and  hence  it  came  into  the 
early  Church,  where  it  was  greatly  strengthened  by  the  ad- 
dition of  perhaps  the  most  noble  of  mystic  ideas — the  recog- 
nition of  the  human  body  as  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
Hence  Tertullian  denounced  the  anatomist  Herophilus  as  a 
butcher,  and  St.  Augustine  spoke  of  anatomists  generally  in 
similar  terms. 

But  this  nobler  conception  was  alloyed  with  a  mediaeval 
superstition  even  more  effective,  when  the  formula  known 
as  the  Apostles'  Creed  had,  in  its  teachings  regarding  the 
resurrection  of  the  body,  supplanted  the  doctrine  laid  down 
by  St.  Paul.  Thence  came  a  dread  of  mutilating  the  body 
in  such  a  way  that  some  injury  might  result  to  its  final  res- 
urrection at  the  Last  Day,  and  additional  reasons  for  hinder- 
ing dissections  in  the  study  of  anatomy. 

To  these  arguments  against  dissection  was  now  added 
another — one  which  may  well  fill  us  with  amazement.  It  is 
the  remark  of  the  foremost  of  recent  English  philosophical 
historians,  that  of  all  organizations  in  human  history  the 
Church  of  Rome  has  caused  the  greatest  spilling  of  innocent 
blood.  No  one  conversant  with  history,  even  though  he  ad- 
mit all  possible  extenuating  circumstances,  and  honour  the 
older  Church  for  the  great  services  which  can  undoubtedly 
be  claimed  for  her,  can  deny  this  statement.  Strange  is  it, 
then,  to  note  that  one  of  the  main  objections  developed  in  the 
Middle  Ages  against  anatomical  studies  was  the  maxim  that 
"the  Church  abhors  the  shedding  of  blood." 

On  this  ground,  in  1248,  the  Council  of  Le  Mans  forbade 
surgery  to  monks.  Many  other  councils  did  the  same,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  came  the  most  serious 


32  FROM    MIRACLES    TO    MEDICINE. 

blow  of  all ;  for  then  it  was  that  Pope  Boniface  VIII,  with- 
out any  of  that  foresight  of  consequences  which  might  well 
have  been  expected  in  an  infallible  teacher,  issued  a  decretal 
forbidding  a  practice  which  had  come  into  use  during  the 
Crusades,  namely,  the  separation  of  the  flesh  from  the  bones 
of  the  dead  whose  remains  it  was  desired  to  carry  back  to 
their  own  country. 

The  idea  lying  at  the  bottom  of  this  interdiction  was  in 
all  probability  that  which  had  inspired  Tertullian  to  make 
his  bitter  utterance  against  Herophilus ;  but,  be  that  as  it 
may,  it  soon  came  to  be  considered  as  extending  to  all  dis- 
section, and  thereby  surgery  and  medicine  were  crippled  for 
more  than  two  centuries ;  it  was  the  worst  blow  they  ever 
received,  for  it  impressed  upon  the  mind  of  the  Church  the 
belief  that  all  dissection  is  sacrilege,  and  led  to  ecclesias- 
tical mandates  withdrawing  from  the  healing  art  the  most 
thoughtful  and  cultivated  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  giv- 
ing up  surgery  to  the  lowest  class  of  nomadic  charlatans. 

So  deeply  was  this  idea  rooted  in  the  mind  of  the  univer- 
sal Church  that  for  over  a  thousand  years  surgery  was  con- 
sidered dishonourable :  the  greatest  monarchs  were  often 
unable  to  secure  an  ordinary  surgical  operation  ;  and  it  was 
only  in  1406  that  a  better  beginning  was  made,  when  the  Em- 
peror Wenzel  of  Germany  ordered  that  dishonour  should  no 
longer  attach  to  the  surgical  profession.* 

*  As  to  religious  scruples  against  dissection,  and  abhorrence  of  the  Paraschiies, 
or  embalmer,  see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  The  Dawn  of  Civilization,  p.  216.  For  de- 
nunciation of  surgery  by  the  Church  authorities,  see  Sprengel,  vol.  ii,  pp.  432-435  ; 
also  Fort,  pp.  452  et  seq.  ;  and  for  the  reasoning  which  led  the  Church  to  forbid 
surgery  to  priests,  see  especially  Fredault,  Histoire  de  la  Me'decine,  p.  200.  As  to 
the  decretal  of  Boniface  VIII,  the  usual  statement  is  that  he  forbade  all  dissections. 
While  it  was  undoubtedly  construed  universally  to  prohibit  dissections  for  anatom- 
ical purposes,  its  declared  intent  was  as  stated  in  the  text ;  that  it  was  constantly 
construed  against  anatomical  investigations  can  not  for  a  moment  be  denied.  This 
construction  is  taken  for  granted  in  the  great  Histoire  Litte'raire  de  la  France,  founded 
by  the  Benedictines,  certainly  a  very  high  authority  as  to  the  main  current  of  opin- 
ion in  the  Church.  For  the  decretal  of  Boniface  VIII,  see  the  Co7-pus  Juris  Cano- 
nici.  I  have  used  the  edition  of  Paris,  1618,  where  it  maybe  found  on  pp.  866,  867. 
See  also,  in  spite  of  the  special  pleading  of  Giraldi,  the  Benedictine  Hist.  Lit.  de 
la  France,  tome  xvi,  p.  98. 


NEW   BEGINNINGS   OF    MEDICAL   SCIENCE.  33 


VI.    NEW   BEGINNINGS   OF    MEDICAL  SCIENCE. 

In  spite  of  all  these  opposing  forces,  the  evolution  of  med- 
ical science  continued,  though  but  slowly.  In  the  second 
century  of  the  Christian  era  Galen  had  made  himself  a  great 
authority  at  Rome,  and  from  Rome  had  swayed  the  medical 
science  of  the  world  :  his  genius  triumphed  over  the  defects 
of  his  method  ;  but,  though  he  gave  a  powerful  impulse  to 
medicine,  his  dogmatism  stood  in  its  way  long  afterward. 

The  places  where  medicine,  such  as  it  thus  became,  could 
be  applied,  were  at  first  mainly  the  infirmaries  of  various 
monasteries,  especially  the  larger  ones  of  the  Benedictine 
order :  these  were  frequently  developed  into  hospitals. 
Many  monks  devoted  themselves  to  such  medical  studies  as 
were  permitted,  and  sundry  churchmen  and  laymen  did 
much  to  secure  and  preserve  copies  of  ancient  medical  trea- 
tises. So,  too,  in  the  cathedral  schools  established  by  Char- 
lemagne and  others,  provision  was  generally  made  for  med- 
ical teaching ;  but  all  this  instruction,  whether  in  convents 
or  schools,  was  wretchedly  poor.  It  consisted  not  in  devel- 
oping by  individual  thought  and  experiment  the  gifts  of  Hip- 
pocrates, Aristotle,  and  Galen,  but  almost  entirely  in  the 
parrot-like  repetition  of  their  writings. 

But,  while  the  inherited  ideas  of  Church  leaders  were 
thus  unfavourable  to  any  proper  development  of  medical  sci- 
ence, there  were  two  bodies  of  men  outside  the  Church  who, 
though  largely  fettered  by  superstition,  were  far  less  so  than 
the  monks  and  students  of  ecclesiastical  schools  :  these  were 
the  Jews  and  Mohammedans.  The  first  of  these  especially 
had  inherited  many  useful  sanitary  and  hygienic  ideas,  which 
had  probably  been  first  evolved  by  the  Egyptians,  and  from 
them  transmitted  to  the  modern  world  mainly  through  the 
sacred  books  attributed  to  Moses. 

The  Jewish  scholars  became  especially  devoted  to  med- 
ical science.  To  them  is  largely  due  the  building  up  of  the 
School  of  Salerno,  which  we  find  flourishing  in  the  tenth 
century.  Judged  by  our  present  standards  its  work  was 
poor  indeed,  but  compared  with  other  medical  instruction 
of  the  time  it  was  vastly  superior:  it  developed  hygienic 
31 


34  FROM    MIRACLES    TO   MEDICINE. 

principles  especially,  and  brought  medicine  upon  a  higher 
plane. 

Still  more  important  is  the  rise  of  the  School  of  Mont- 
pellier;  this  was  due  almost  entirely  to  Jewish  physicians, 
and  it  developed  medical  studies  to  a  yet  higher  point,  doing 
much  to  create  a  medical  profession  worthy  of  the  name 
throughout  southern  Europe. 

As  to  the  Arabians,  we  find  them  from  the  tenth  to  the 
fourteenth  century,  especially  in  Spain,  giving  much  thought 
to  medicine,  and  to  chemistry  as  subsidiary  to  it.  About 
the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century,  when  the  greater  Chris- 
tian writers  were  supporting  fetich  by  theology,  Almamon, 
the  Moslem,  declared,  "  They  are  the  elect  of  God,  his  best 
and  most  useful  servants,  whose  lives  are  devoted  to  the  im- 
provement of  their  rational  faculties."  The  influence  of  Avi- 
cenna,  the  translator  of  the  works  of  Aristotle,  extended 
throughout  all  Europe  during  the  eleventh  century.  The 
Arabians  were  indeed  much  fettered  by  tradition  in  medical 
science,  but  their  translations  of  Hippocrates  and  Galen  pre- 
served to  the  world  the  best  thus  far  developed  in  medicine, 
and  still  better  were  their  contributions  to  pharmacy :  these 
remain  of  value  to  the  present  hour.* 

Various  Christian  laymen  also  rose  above  the  prevailing 
theologic  atmosphere  far  enough  to  see  the  importance  of 
promoting  scientific  development.  First  among  these  we 
may  name  the  Emperor  Charlemagne ;  he  and  his  great 
minister,  Alcuin,  not  only  promoted  medical  studies  in  the 
schools  they  founded,  but  also  made  provision  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  botanic  gardens  in  which  those  herbs  were  espe- 
pecially  cultivated  which  were  supposed  to  have  healing 
virtues.  So,  too,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  Emperor 
Frederick  II,  though  under  the  ban  of  the  Pope,  brought  to- 

*  For  the  great  services  rendered  to  the  development  of  medicine  by  the  Jews, 
see  Monteil,  Mtdecine  en  France,  p.  58  ;  also  the  historians  of  medicine  generally. 
For  the  quotation  from  Almamon,  see  Gibbon,  vol.  x,  p.  42.  For  the  services  of 
both  Jews  and  Arabians,  see  Bedarride,  Histoire  des  Juifs,  p.  115  ;  also  Sismondi, 
Histoire  des  Francais,  tome  i,  p.  191.  For  the  Arabians,  especially,  see  Rosseeuw 
Saint-Hilaire,  Histoire  d'Espagne,  Paris,  1844,  vol.  iii,  pp.  iqi  et  scq.  For  the  tend- 
ency of  the  Mosaic  books  to  insist  on  hygienic  rather  than  therapeutical  treatment, 
and  its  consequences  among  Jewish  physicians,  see  Sprengel,  but  especially  Fr6- 
dault,  p.  14. 


NEW    BEGINNINGS   OF    MEDICAL   SCIENCE. 

gether  in  his  various  journeys,  and  especially  in  his  crusad- 
ing expeditions,  many  Greek  and  Arabic  manuscripts,  and 
took  special  pains  to  have  those  which  concerned  medicine 
preserved  and  studied ;  he  also  promoted  better  ideas  of 
medicine  and  embodied  them  in  laws. 

Men  of  science  also  rose,  in  the  stricter  sense  of  the  word, 
even  in  the  centuries  under  the  most  complete  sway  of 
theological  thought  and  ecclesiastical  power;  a  science,  in- 
deed, alloyed  with  theology,  but  still  infolding  precious 
germs.  Of  these  were  men  like  Arnold  of  Villanova,  Ber- 
trand  de  Gordon,  Albert  of  Bollstadt,  Basil  Valentine,  Ray- 
mond Lully,  and,  above  all,  Roger  Bacon  ;  all  of  whom  culti- 
vated sciences  subsidiary  to  medicine,  and  in  spite  of  charges 
of  sorcery,  with  possibilities  of  imprisonment  and  death,  kept 
the  torch  of  knowledge  burning,  and  passed  it  on  to  future 
generations.* 

From  the  Church  itself,  even  when  the  theological  atmos- 
phere was  most  dense,  rose  here  and  there  men  who  persisted 
in  something  like  scientific  effort  As  early  as  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, Bertharius,  a  monk  of  Monte  Cassino,  prepared  two 
manuscript  volumes  of  prescriptions  selected  from  ancient 
writers;  other  monks  studied  them  somewhat,  and,  during 
succeeding  ages,  scholars  like  Hugo,  Abbot  of  St.  Denis, — 
Notker,  monk  of  St.  Gall, — Hildegard,  Abbess  of  Ruperts- 
berg, — Milo,  Archbishop  of  Beneventum, — and  John  of  St. 
Amand,  Canon  of  Tournay,  did  something  for  medicine  as 
they  understood  it.  Unfortunately,  they  generally  under- 
stood its  theory  as  a  mixture  of  deductions  from  Scripture 
with  dogmas  from  Galen,  and  its  practice  as  a  mixture  of 
incantations  with  fetiches.  Even  Pope  Honorius  III  did 
something  for  the  establishment  of  medical  schools;  but  he 
did  so  much  more  to  place  ecclesiastical  and  theological 
fetters  upon  teachers  and  taught,  that  the  value  of  his  gifts 
may  well  be  doubted.     All  germs  of  a  higher  evolution  of 

*  For  the  progress  of  sciences  subsidiary  to  medicine  even  in  the  darkest  ages, 
see  Fort,  pp.  374,  375  ;  also  Isensee,  Gcschichte  der  Medicin,  pp.  225  et  seq.  ;  also 
Monteil,  p.  89  ;  Heller,  Gcschichte  der  Physik,  vol.  i,  bk.  3  ;  also  Kopp,  Ge- 
schichce  der  Chemie.  For  Frederick  II  and  his  Medicinal-Geselz,  see  Baas,  p.  221, 
but  especially  Von  Raumer,  Gcschichte  der  Ilohenstaufcn,  Leipsic,  1872,  vol.  iii, 
P-  259. 


36 


FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 


medicine  were  for  ages  well  kept  under  by  the  theological 
spirit.  As  far  back  as  the  sixth  century  so  great  a  man  as 
Pope  Gregory  I  showed  himself  hostile  to  the  development 
of  this  science.  In  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century  the 
Council  of  Rheims  interdicted  the  study  of  law  and  physic 
to  monks,  and  a  multitude  of  other  councils  enforced  this 
decree.  About  the  middle  of  the  same  century  St.  Bernard 
still  complained  that  monks  had  too  much  to  do  with  medi- 
cine ;  and  a  few  years  later  we  have  decretals  like  those  of 
Pope  Alexander  III  forbidding  monks  to  study  or  practise 
it.  For  many  generations  there  appear  evidences  of  a  desire 
among  the  more  broad-minded  churchmen  to  allow  the  cul- 
tivation of  medical  science  among  ecclesiastics :  Popes  like 
Clement  III  and  Sylvester  II  seem  to  have  favoured  this, 
and  we  even  hear  of  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  skilled  in 
medicine  ;  but  in  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  the 
Fourth  Council  of  the  Lateran  forbade  surgical  operations 
to  be  practised  by  priests,  deacons,  and  subdeacons;  and 
some  years  later  Honorius  III  reiterated  this  decree  and 
extended  it.  In  1243  the  Dominican  order  forbade  medical 
treatises  to  be  brought  into  their  monasteries,  and  finally  all 
participation  of  ecclesiastics  in  the  science  and  art  of  medi- 
cine was  effectually  prevented.* 

VII.    THEOLOGICAL   DISCOURAGEMENT   OF    MEDICINE. 

While  various  churchmen,  building  better  than  they 
knew,  thus  did  something  to  lay  foundations  for  medical 
study,  the  Church  authorities,  as  a  rule,  did  even  more  to 
thwart  it  among  the  very  men  who,  had  they  been  allowed 
libertv,  would  have  cultivated  it  to  the  highest  advantage. 

*  For  statements  as  to  these  decrees  of  the  highest  Church  and  monastic  authori- 
ties against  medicine  and  surgery,  see  Sprengel,  Baas,  Gcschichte  dcr  Mcdicin,  p. 
204,  and  elsewhere  ;  also  Buckle,  Posthumous  Works,  vol.  ii,  p.  567.  For  a  long 
list  of  Church  dignitaries  who  practised  a  semi-theological  medicine  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  see  Baas,  pp.  204,  205.  For  Bertharius,  Hildegard,  and  others  mentioned, 
see  also  Sprengel  and  other  historians  of  medicine.  For  clandestine  study  and 
practice  of  medicine  by  sundry  ecclesiastics  in  spite  of  the  prohibitions  by  the 
Church,  see  Von  Raumer,  Hohenstaufen,  vol.  vi,  p.  438.  For  some  remarks  on  this 
subject  by  an  eminent  and  learned  ecclesiastic,  see  Richer,  O.  S.  B.,  professor  in 
the  University  of  Vienna,  Pastoral-Psychiatrie,  Wien,  1894,  pp.  12,  13. 


THEOLOGICAL   DISCOURAGEMENT    OF    MEDICINE.  ->•, 

Then,  too,  we  find  cropping-  out  everywhere  the  feeling 
that,  since  supernatural  means  are  so  abundant,  there  is 
something  irreligious  in  seeking  cure  by  natural  means: 
ever  and  anon  we  have  appeals  to  Scripture,  and  especially 
to  the  case  of  King  Asa,  who  trusted  to  physicians  rather 
than  to  the  priests  of  Jahveh,  and  so  died.  Hence  it  was 
that  St.  Bernard  declared  that  monks  who  took  medicine 
were  guilty  of  conduct  unbecoming  to  religion.  Even  the 
School  of  Salerno  was  held  in  aversion  by  multitudes  of 
strict  churchmen,  since  it  prescribed  rules  for  diet,  thereby 
indicating  a  belief  that  diseases  arise  from  natural  causes  and 
not  from  the  malice  of  the  devil :  moreover,  in  the  medical 
schools  Hippocrates  was  studied,  and  he  had  especially  de- 
clared that  demoniacal  possession  is  "  nowise  more  divine, 
nowise  more  infernal,  than  any  other  disease."  Hence  it  was, 
doubtless,  that  the  Lateran  Council,  about  the  beginning  of 
the  thirteenth  century,  forbade  physicians,  under  pain  of 
exclusion  from  the  Church,  to  undertake  medical  treatment 
without  calling  in  ecclesiastical  advice. 

This  view  was  long  cherished  in  the  Church,  and  nearly 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  later  Pope  Pius  V  revived  it 
by  renewing  the  command  of  Pope  Innocent  and  enforcing 
it  with  penalties.  Not  only  did  Pope  Pius  order  that  all 
physicians  before  administering  treatment  should  call  in  "a 
physician  of  the  soul,"  on  the  ground,  as  he  declares,  that 
"  bodily  infirmity  frequently  arises  from  sin,"  but  he  ordered 
that,  if  at  the  end  of  three  days  the  patient  had  not  made  con- 
fession to  a  priest,  the  medical  man  should  cease  his  treat- 
ment, under  pain  of  being  deprived  of  his  right  to  practise, 
and  of  expulsion  from  the  faculty  if  he  were  a  professor,  and 
that  every  physician  and  professor  of  medicine  should  make 
oath  that  he  was  strictly  fulfilling  these  conditions. 

Out  of  this  feeling  had  grown  up  another  practice,  which 
made  the  development  of  medicine  still  more  difficult — the 
classing  of  scientific  men  generally  with  sorcerers  and  magic- 
mongers  :  from  this  largely  rose  the  charge  of  atheism 
against  physicians,  which  ripened  into  a  proverb,  "  Where 
there  are  three  physicians  there  are  two  atheists."  * 

*  "  Ubi  sunt  tres  medici  ibi  sunt  duo  athei."     For  the  bull  of  Pius  V,  see  the 
Bullarium  Romanum,  ed.  Gaude,  Naples,  18S2,  torn,  vii,  pp.  430,  431. 


3S  FROM    MIRACLES    TO    MEDICINE. 

Magic  was  so  common  a  charge  that  many  physicians 
seemed  to  believe  it  themselves.  In  the  tenth  century  Ger- 
bert,  afterward  known  as  Pope  Sylvester  II,  was  at  once  sus- 
pected of  sorcery  when  he  showed  a  disposition  to  adopt 
scientific  methods  ;  in  the  eleventh  century  this  charge  nearly 
cost  the  life  of  Constantine  Africanus  when  he  broke  from 
the  beaten  path  of  medicine  ;  in  the  thirteenth,  it  gave  Roger 
Bacon,  one  of  the  greatest  benefactors  of  mankind,  many 
years  of  imprisonment,  and  nearly  brought  him  to  the  stake : 
these  cases  are  typical  of  very  many. 

Still  another  charge  against  physicians  who  showed  a 
talent  for  investigation  was  that  of  Mohammedanism  and 
Averroism  ;  and  Petrarch  stigmatized  Averroists  as  "  men 
who  deny  Genesis  and  bark  at  Christ."  * 

The  effect  of  this  widespread  ecclesiastical  opposition 
was,  that  for  many  centuries  the  study  of  medicine  was  rele- 
gated mainly  to  the  lowest  order  of  practitioners.  There 
was,  indeed,  one  orthodox  line  of  medical  evolution  during 
the  later  Middle  Ages :  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  insisted  that  the 
forces  of  the  body  are  independent  of  its  physical  organiza- 
tion, and  that  therefore  these  forces  are  to  be  studied  by  the 
scholastic  philosophy  and  the  theological  method,  instead  of 
by  researches  into  the  structure  of  the  body  ;  as  a  result  of 
this,  mingled  with  survivals  of  various  pagan  superstitions, 
we  have  in  anatomy  and  physiology  such  doctrines  as  the 
increase  and  decrease  of  the  brain  with  the  phases  of  the 
moon,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  human  vitality  with  the  tides  of 
the  ocean,  the  use  of  the  lungs  to  fan  the  heart,  the  function 
of  the  liver  as  the  seat  of  love,  and  that  of  the  spleen  as  the 
centre  of  wit. 

Closely  connected  with  these  methods  of  thought  was  the 
doctrine  of  signatures.  It  was  reasoned  that  the  Almighty 
must  have  set  his  sign  upon  the  various  means  of  curing  dis- 
ease which  he  has  provided  :  hence  it  was  held  that  blood- 
root,  on  account  of  its  red  juice,  is  good  for  the  blood  ;  liver- 
wort, having  a  leaf  like  the  liver,  cures  diseases  of  the  liver; 
eyebright,  being  marked  with  a  spot  like  an  eye,  cures  dis- 

*  For  Averroes,  see  Renan,  Averroh  et  I'Averroisme,  Paris,  1861,  pp.  327-335. 
For  a  perfectly  just  statement  of  the  only  circumstances  which  can  justify  a  charge 
of  atheism,  see  Rev.  Dr.  Deems,  in  Popular  Science  Monthly,  February,  1876. 


THEOLOGICAL   DISCOURAGEMENT    OF    MEDICI NE. 


39 


eases  of  the  eyes;  celandine,  having  a  yellow  juice,  cures 
jaundice;  bugloss,  resembling  a  snake's  head,  cures  snake- 
bite; red  flannel,  looking  like  blood,  cures  blood-taints,  and 
therefore  rheumatism  ;  bear's  grease,  being  taken  from  an 
animal  thickly  covered  with  hair,  is  recommended  to  per- 
sons fearing  baldness.* 

Still  another  method  evolved  by  this  theological  pseudo- 
science  was  that  of  disgusting  the  demon  with  the  body 
which  he  tormented  :  hence  the  patient  was  made  to  swal- 
low or  apply  to  himself  various  unspeakable  ordures,  with 
such  medicines  as  the  livers  of  toads,  the  blood  of  frogs 
and  rats,  fibres  of  the  hangman's  rope,  and  ointment  made 
from  the  body  of  gibbeted  criminals.  Many  of  these  were 
survivals  of  heathen  superstitions,  but  theologic  reasoning 
wrought  into  them  an  orthodox  significance.  As  an  example 
of  this  mixture  of  heathen  with  Christian  magic,  we  may 
cite  the  following  from  a  mediaeval  medical  book  as  a  salve 
against  "  nocturnal  goblin  visitors  "  :  "  Take  hop  plant,  worm- 
wood, bishopwort,  lupine,  ash-throat,  henbane,  harewort, 
viper's  bugloss,  heathberry  plant,  cropleek,  garlic,  grains  of 
hedgerife,  githrife,  and  fennel.  Put  these  worts  into  a  ves- 
sel, set  them  under  the  altar,  sing  over  them  nine  masses, 
boil  them  in  butter  and  sheep's  grease,  add  much  holy  salt, 
strain  through  a  cloth,  throw  the  worts  into  running  water. 
If  any  ill  tempting  occur  to  a  man,  or  an  elf  or  goblin  night 
visitors  come,  smear  his  body  with  this  salve,  and  put  it  on 
his  eyes,  and  cense  him  with  incense,  and  sign  him  frequently 
with  the  sign  of  the  cross.  His  condition  will  soon  be 
better."  f 

*  For  a  summary  of  the  superstitions  which  arose  under  the  theological  doctrine 
of  signatures,  see  Dr.  Eccles's  admirable  little  tract  on  the  Evolution  of  Medical 
Science,  p.  140  ;  see  also  Scoffern,  Science  and  Folk  Lore,  p.  76. 

f  For  a  list  of  unmentionable  ordures  used  in  Germany  near  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  see  Lammert,  Volksmedizin  und  medizinischer  Aberglaube  in 
Bayer n,  Wiirzburg,  1869,  p.  34,  note.  For  the  English  prescription  given,  see 
Cockayne,  Leechdoms,  Wortcunning,  and  Starcraft  of  Early  England,  in  the  Mas, 
ter  of  the  Rolls'  series,  London,  1865,  vol.  ii,  pp.  345  and  following.  Still  another 
of  these  prescriptions  given  by  Cockayne  covers  three  or  four  octavo  pages.  For 
very  full  details  of  this  sort  of  sacred  pseudo-science  in  Germany,  with  accounts  of 
survivals  of  it  at  the  present  time,  see  Wuttke,  Prof,  der  Theologie  in  Halle,  Der 
Deutsche  Volksabeiglaube  der  Gegemvart,  Berlin,  1869,  passim.  For  France,  see 
Rambaud,  I/istoire  de  la  Civilisatio?i  francaise,  pp.  371  et  sea. 


40 


FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 


As  to  surgery,  this  same  amalgamation  of  theology  with 
survivals  of  pagan  beliefs  continued  to  check  the  evolution 
of  medical  science  down  to  the  modern  epoch.  The  nominal 
hostility  of  the  Church  to  the  shedding  of  blood  withdrew, 
as  we  have  seen,  from  surgical  practice  the  great  body  of 
her  educated  men  ;  hence  surgery  remained  down  to  the 
fifteenth  century  a  despised  profession,  its  practice  continued 
largely  in  the  hands  of  charlatans,  and  down  to  a  very  re- 
cent period  the  name  "  barber-surgeon  "  was  a  survival  of 
this.  In  such  surgery,  the  application  of  various  ordures 
relieved  fractures  ;  the  touch  of  the  hangman  cured  sprains  ; 
the  breath  of  a  donkey  expelled  poison  ;  friction  with  a  dead 
man's  tooth  cured  toothache.* 

The  enormous  development  of  miracle  and  fetich  cures 
in  the  Church  continued  during  century  after  century,  and 
here  probably  lay  the  main  causes  of  hostility  between  the 
Church  on  the  one  hand  and  the  better  sort  of  physicians  on 
the  other  ;  namely,  in  the  fact  that  the  Church  supposed 
herself  in  possession  of  something  far  better  than  scientific 
methods  in  medicine.  Under  the  sway  of  this  belief  a  natu- 
ral and  laudable  veneration  for  the  relics  of  Christian  mar- 
tyrs was  developed  more  and  more  into  pure  fetichism. 

Thus  the  water  in  which  a  single  hair  of  a  saint  had  been 
dipped  was  used  as  a  purgative  ;  water  in  which  St.  Remy's 
ring  had  been  dipped  cured  fevers  ;  wine  in  which  the  bones 
of  a  saint  had  been  dipped  cured  lunacy  ;  oil  from  a  lamp 
burning  before  the  tomb  of  St.  Gall  cured  tumours;  St.  Val- 
entine cured  epilepsy ;  St.  Christopher,  throat  diseases ;  St. 
Eutropius,  dropsy  ;  St.  Ovid,  deafness ;  St.  Gervase,  rheu- 
matism ;  St.  Apollonia,  toothache ;  St.  Vitus,  St.  Anthony, 
and  a  multitude  of  other  saints,  the  maladies  which  bear 
their  names.  Even  as  late  as  1784  we  find  certain  authorities 
in  Bavaria  ordering  that  any  one  bitten  by  a  mad  dog  shall 
at  once  put  up  prayers  at  the  shrine  of  St.  Hubert,  and  not 
waste  his  time  in  any  attempts  at  medical  or  surgical  cure.f 
In  the  twelfth  century  we  find  a  noted  cure  attempted  by 

*  On  the  low  estate  of  surgery  during  the  Middle  Ages,  see  the  histories  of 
medicine  already  cited,  and  especially  Kotelmann,  Gesundheitspjlcge  im  M ittelaltcr, 
Hamburg,  1890,  pp.  216  ct  seq. 

\  See  Baas,  p.  614  ;  also  Biedcrmann. 


THEOLOGICAL   DISCOURAGEMENT   OF   MEDICINE.  41 

causing  the  invalid  to  drink  water  in  which  St.  Bernard  had 
washed  his  hands.  Flowers  which  had  rested  on  the  tomb 
of  a  saint,  when  steeped  in  water,  were  supposed  to  be  espe- 
cially effiacious  in  various  diseases.  The  pulpit  everywhere 
dwelt  with  unction  on  the  reality  of  fetich  cures,  and  among 
the  choice  stories  collected  by  Archbishop  Jacques  de  Vitry 
for  the  use  of  preachers  was  one  which,  judging  from  its 
frequent  recurrence  in  monkish  literature,  must  have  sunk 
deep  into  the  popular  mind :  "  Two  lazy  beggars,  one  blind, 
the  other  lame,  try  to  avoid  the  relics  of  St.  Martin,  borne 
about  in  procession,  so  that  they  may  not  be  healed  and  lose 
their  claim  to  alms.  The  blind  man  takes  the  lame  man  on 
his  shoulders  to  guide  him,  but  they  are  caught  in  the  crowd 
and  healed  against  their  will."* 

Very  important  also  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  were 
the  medical  virtues  attributed  to  saliva.  The  use  of  this 
remedy  had  early  Oriental  sanction.  It  is  clearly  found  in 
Egypt.  Pliny  devotes  a  considerable  part  of  one  of  his 
chapters  to  it;  Galen  approved  it;  Vespasian,  when  he 
visited  Alexandria,  is  said  to  have  cured  a  blind  man  by  ap- 
plying saliva  to  his  eyes;  but  the  great  example  impressed 
most  forcibly  upon  the  mediaeval  mind  was  the  use  of  it 
ascribed  in  the  fourth  Gospel  to  Jesus  himself:  thence  it 
came  not  only  into  Church  ceremonial,  but  largely  into  med- 
ical practice. f 

As  the  theological  atmosphere  thickened,  nearly  every 
country  had  its  long  list  of  saints,  each  with  a  special  power 
over  some  one  organ  or  disease.  The  clergy,  having  great 
influence  over  the  medical  schools,  conscientiously  mixed 
this  fetich  medicine  with  the  beginnings  of  science.  In  the 
tenth  century,  even  at  the  School  of  Salerno,  we  find  that 

*  For  the  efficacy  of  flowers,  see  the  Bollandist  Lives  of  the  Saints,  cited  in  Fort, 
p.  279  ;  also  pp.  457,  458.  For  the  story  of  those  unwillingly  cured,  see  the  Exem- 
pla  of  Jacques  de  Vitry,  edited  by  Prof.  T.  F.  Crane,  of  Cornell  University,  Lon- 
don, 1890,  pp.  52,  182. 

f  As  to  the  use  of  saliva  in  medicine,  see  Story,  Castle  of  St.  Angelo,  and  Other 
Essays,  London,  1877,  pp.  208  and  elsewhere.  For  Pliny,  Galen,  and  others,  see 
the  same,  p.  211  ;  see  also  the  book  of  Tobit,  chap,  xi,  2-13.  For  the  case  of 
Vespasian,  see  Suetonius,  Life  of  Vespasian  ;  also  Tacitus,  Historic,  lib.  iv,  c.  81. 
For  its  use  by  St.  Francis  Xavier,  see  Coleridge,  Life  and  Letters  of  St.  Francis 
Xavier,  London,  1872. 


42  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

the  sick  were  cured  not  only  by  medicine,  but  by  the  relics 
of  St.  Matthew  and  others. 

Human  nature,  too,  asserted  itself,  then  as  now,  by  mak- 
ing various  pious  cures  fashionable  for  a  time  and  then 
allowing  them  to  become  unfashionable.  Just  as  we  see  the 
relics  of  St.  Cosmo  and  St.  Damian  in  great  vogue  during 
the  early  Middle  Ages,  but  out  of  fashion  and  without  effi- 
cacy afterward,  so  we  find  in  the  thirteenth  century  that  the 
bones  of  St.  Louis,  having  come  into  fashion,  wrought  multi- 
tudes of  cures,  while  in  the  fourteenth,  having  become  un- 
fashionable, they  ceased  to  act,  and  gave  place  for  a  time  to 
the  relics  of  St.  Roch  of  Montpellier  and  St.  Catherine  of 
Sienna,  which  in  their  turn  wrought  many  cures  until  they 
too  became  out  of  date  and  yielded  to  other  saints.  Just  so 
in  modern  times  the  healing  miracles  of  La  Salette  have  lost 
prestige  in  some  measure,  and  those  of  Lourdes  have  come 
into  fashion.* 

Even  such  serious  matters  as  fractures,  calculi,  and  diffi- 
cult parturition,  in  which  modern  science  has  achieved  some 
of  its  greatest  triumphs,  were  then  dealt  with  by  relics ;  and 
to  this  hour  the  ex  votos  hanging  at  such  shrines  as  those  of 
St.  Genevieve  at  Paris,  of  St.  Antony  at  Padua,  of  the  Druid 
image  at  Chartres,  of  the  Virgin  at  Einsiedeln  and  Lourdes, 
of  the  fountain  at  La  Salette,  are  survivals  of  this  same  con- 
ception of  disease  and  its  cure. 

So,  too,  with  a  multitude  of  sacred  pools,  streams,  and 
spots  of  earth.  In  Ireland,  hardly  a  parish  has  not  had  one 
such  sacred  centre ;  in  England  and  Scotland  there  have 
been  many;  and  as  late  as  1805  the  eminent  Dr.  M-ilner,  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  gave  a  careful  and  earnest  ac- 
count of  a  miraculous  cure  wrought  at  a  sacred  well  in  Flint- 
shire. In  all  parts  of  Europe  the  pious  resort  to  wells  and 
springs  continued  long  after  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  has  not  entirely  ceased  to-day. 

It  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  suppose  intentional  deception 

*  For  one  of  these  lists  of  saints  curing  diseases,  see  Pettigrew,  On  Supersti- 
tions connected  with  Medicine  ;  for  another,  see  Jacob,  Superstitions  Populaires,  pp. 
96-100  ;  also  Rydberg,  p.  69  ;  also  Maury,  Rambaud,  and  others.  For  a  compari- 
son of  fashions  in  miracles  with  fashions  in  modern  healing  agents,  see  Littre, 
Medecine  et  Jl/e'decins,  pp.  118,  136,  and  elsewhere  ;  also  Sprengel,  vol.  ii,  p.  143. 


THEOLOGICAL    DISCOURAGEMENT   OF    MEDICINE.  43 

in  the  origin  and  maintenance  of  all  fetich  cures.  Although 
two  different  judicial  investigations  of  the  modern  miracles 
at  La  Salette  have  shown  their  origin  tainted  with  fraud, 
and  though  the  recent  restoration  of  the  Cathedral  of 
Trondhjem  has  revealed  the  fact  that  the  healing  powers 
of  the  sacred  spring  which  once  brought  such  great  reve- 
nues to  that  shrine  were  assisted  by  angelic  voices  spoken 
through  a  tube  in  the  walls,  not  unlike  the  pious  machinery 
discovered  in  the  Temple  of  Isis  at  Pompeii,  there  is  little 
doubt  that  the  great  majority  of  fountain  and  even  shrine 
cures,  such  as  they  have  been,  have  resulted  from  a  natural 
law,  and  that  belief  in  them  was  based  on  honest  argument 
from  Scripture.  For  the  theological  argument  which  thus 
stood  in  the  way  of  science  was  simply  this :  if  the  Almighty 
saw  fit  to  raise  the  dead  man  who  touched  the  bones  of  Elisha, 
why  should  he  not  restore  to  life  the  patient  who  touches  at 
Cologne  the  bones  of  the  Wise  Men  of  the  East  who  followed 
the  star  of  the  Nativity  ?  If  Naaman  was  cured  by  dipping 
himself  in  the  waters  of  the  Jordan,  and  so  many  others  by 
going  down  into  the  Pool  of  Siloam,  why  should  not  men 
still  be  cured  by  bathing  in  pools  which  men  equally  holy 
with  Elisha  have  consecrated  ?  If  one  sick  man  was  restored 
by  touching  the  garments  of  St.  Paul,  why  should  not  an- 
other sick  man  be  restored  by  touching  the  seamless  coat  of 
Christ  at  Treves,  or  the  winding-sheet  of  Christ  at  Besan- 
con?  And  out  of  all  these  inquiries  came  inevitably  that 
question  whose  logical  answer  was  especially  injurious  to 
the  development  of  medical  science  :  Why  should  men  seek 
to  build  up  scientific  medicine  and  surgery,  when  relics,  pil- 
grimages, and  sacred  observances,  according  to  an  over- 
whelming  mass  of  concurrent  testimony,  have  cured  and  are 
curing  hosts  of  sick  folk  in  all  parts  of  Europe?* 


*  For  sacred  fountains  in  modern  times,  see  Pettigrew,  as  above,  p.  42  ;  also 
Dalyell,  Darker  Superstitions  of  Scotland,  pp.  82  and  following;  also  Montalem- 
bert,  Les  Moines  a" Occident,  tome  iii,  p.  323,  note.  For  those  in  Ireland,  with 
many  curious  details,  see  S.  C.  Hall,  Ireland,  its  Scenery  and  Character,  London, 
1841,  vol.  i,  p.  282,  and  passim.  For  the  case  in  Flintshire,  see  Authentic  Docu- 
ments relative  to  the  Miraculous  Cure  of  Winifred  White,  of  the  Town  of  Wolver- 
hampton, at  Holywell,  Flintshire,  on  the  28th  of  June,  sSoj,  by  John  Milner,  D.  D., 
Vicar  Apostolic,    etc.,  London,   1805.     For  sacred  wells  in   France,  see  Chevart, 


44  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

Still  another  development  of  the  theological  spirit,  mixed 
with  professional  exclusiveness  and  mob  prejudice,  wrought 
untold  injury.  Even  to  those  who  had  become  so  far  eman- 
cipated from  allegiance  to  fetich  cures  as  to  consult  physi- 
cians, it  was  forbidden  to  consult  those  who,  as  a  rule,  were 
the  best.  From  a  very  early  period  of  European  history  the 
Jews  had  taken  the  lead  in  medicine  ;  their  share  in  found- 
ing the  great  schools  of  Salerno  and  Montpellier  we  have 
already  noted,  and  in  all  parts  of  Europe  we  find  them  ac- 
knowledged leaders  in  the  healing  art.  The  Church  author- 
ities, enforcing  the  spirit  of  the  time,  were  especially  severe 
against  these  benefactors :  that  men  who  openly  rejected  the 
means  of  salvation,  and  whose  souls  were  undeniably  lost, 
should  heal  the  elect  seemed  an  insult  to  Providence  ;  preach- 
ing friars  denounced  them  from  the  pulpit,  and  the  rulers  in 
state  and  church,  while  frequently  secretly  consulting  them, 
openly  proscribed  them. 

Gregory  of  Tours  tells  us  of  an  archdeacon  who,  having 
been  partially  cured  of  disease  of  the  eyes  by  St.  Martin, 
sought  further  aid  from  a  Jewish  physician,  with  the  result 
that  neither  the  saint  nor  the  Jew  could  help  him  afterward. 
Popes  Eugene  IV,  Nicholas  V,  and  Calixtus  III  especiallv 
forbade  Christians  to  employ  them.  The  Trullanean  Coun- 
cil in  the  eighth  century,  the  Councils  of  Beziers  and  Alby 
in  the  thirteenth,  the  Councils  of  Avignon  and  Salamanca  in 
the  fourteenth,  the  Synod  of  Bamberg  and  the  Bishop  of  Pas- 
sau  in  the  fifteenth,  the  Council  of  Avignon  in  the  sixteenth, 
with  many  others,  expressly  forbade  the  faithful  to  call  Jew- 
ish physicians  or  surgeons ;  such  great  preachers  as  John 
Geiler  and  John  Herolt  thundered  from  the  pulpit  against 
them  and  all  who  consulted  them.  As  late  as  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  when  the  City  Council  of  Hall,  in 
Wurtemberg,  gave  some  privileges  to  a  Jewish  physician 

Histoire  de  Ckartres,  vol.  i,  pp.  84-89,  and  French  local  histories  generally.  For 
superstitions  attaching  to  springs  in  Germany,  see  Wuttke,  Volksaberglaube,  §§  12 
and  356.  For  one  of  the  most  exquisitely  wrought  works  of  modern  fiction,  show- 
ing perfectly  the  recent  evolution  of  miraculous  powers  at  a  fashionable  spring  in 
France,  see  Gustave  Droz,  Autonr  d'une  Source.  The  reference  to  the  old  pious 
machinery  at  Trondhjem  is  based  upon  personal  observation  by  the  present  writer 
in  August,  1893. 


FETICH   CURES   UNDER   PROTESTANTISM. 


45 


"  on  account  of  his  admirable  experience  and  skill,"  the 
clergy  of  the  city  joined  in  a  protest,  declaring  that  "  it  were 
better  to  die  with  Christ  than  to  be  cured  by  a  Jew  doctor 
aided  by  the  devil."  Still,  in  their  extremity,  bishops,  car- 
dinals, kings,  and  even  popes,  insisted  on  calling  in  physi- 
cians of  the  hated  race.* 


VIII.  FETICH    CURES    UNDER   PROTESTANTISM.— THE    ROYAL 

TOUCH. 

The  Reformation  made  no  sudden  change  in  the  sacred 
theory  of  medicine.  Luther,  as  is  well  known,  again  and 
again  ascribed  his  own  diseases  to  "  devils'  spells,"  declar- 
ing that  "  Satan  produces  all  the  maladies  which  afflict  man- 
kind, for  he  is  the  prince  of  death,"  and  that  "  he  poisons 
the  air  "  ;  but  that  "  no  malady  comes  from  God."  From 
that  day  down  to  the  faith  cures  of  Boston,  Old  Orchard, 
and  among  the  sect  of  "  Peculiar  People  "  in  our  own  time, 
we  see  the  results  among  Protestants  of  seeking  the  cause 
of  disease  in  Satanic  influence  and  its  cure  in  fetichism. 

*  For  the  general  subject  of  the  influence  of  theological  ideas  upon  medicine, 
see  Fort,  History  of  Medical  Economy  during  the  Middle  Ages,  New  York,  1883, 
chaps,  xiii  and  xviii ;  also  Collin  de  Plancy,  Dictionnaire  des  Reliqttes,  passim  ;  also 
Rambaud,  Histoire  de  la  Civilisation  francaise,  Paris,  1885,  vol.  i,  chap,  xviii  ; 
also  Sprengel,  vol.  ii,  p.  345,  and  elsewhere  ;  also  Baas  and  others.  For  proofs  that 
the  School  of  Salerno  was  not  founded  by  the  monks,  Benedictine  or  other,  but  by 
laymen,  who  left  out  a  faculty  of  theology  from  their  organization,  see  Haeser, 
Lehrbuch  der  Geschichte  der  Medicin,  vol.  i,  p.  646  ;  also  Baas.  For  a  very  striking 
statement  that  married  professors,  women,  and  Jews  were  admitted  to  professional 
chairs,  see  Baas,  pp.  208  et  sea.  ;  also  summary  by  Dr.  Payne,  article  in  the  Encyc. 
Brit.  Sprengel's  old  theory  that  the  school  was  founded  by  Benedictines  seems  now 
entirely  given  up  ;  see  Haeser  and  Baas  on  the  subject  ;  also  Daremberg,  La  Mdde- 
cifie,  p.  133.  For  the  citation  from  Gregory  of  Tours,  see  his  Hist.  Francorum, 
lib.  vi.  For  the  eminence  of  Jewish  physicians  and  proscription  of  them,  see  Beu- 
gnot,  Les  Juifs  d'Occident,  Paris,  1824,  pp.  76-94  ;  also  Bedarride,  Les  Juifs  en 
France,  en  Italic,  ct  en  Espagne,  chaps,  v,  viii,  x,  and  xiii ;  also  Renouard,  Histoire 
de  la  Mddecine,  Paris,  1846,  tome  i,  p.  439  ;  also,  especially,  Lammert,  Volksmedi- 
zin,  etc.,  in  Bayern,  p.  6,  note.  For  Church  decrees  against  them,  see  the  Acta  Con- 
ciliorum,  ed.  Hardouin,  vol.  x,  pp.  1634,  1700,  1870,  1973,  etc.  For  denunciations 
of  them  by  Geiler  and  others,  see  Kotelmann,  Gesundheitspflege  im  Mittelalter,  pp. 
194,  195.  For  a  list  of  kings  and  popes  who  persisted  in  having  Jewish  physicians 
and  for  other  curious  information  of  the  sort,  see  Prof.  Levi  of  Vercelli,  Cristiani 
ed  Ebrei  nel  Medio  Evo,  pp.  200-207  '<  and  for  a  very  valuable  summary,  see  Lecky, 
History  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii,  pp.  265-271. 


46  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

Yet  Luther,  with  his  sturdy  common  sense,  broke  away 
from  one  belief  which  has  interfered  with  the  evolution  of 
medicine  from  the  dawn  of  Christianity  until  now.  When 
that  troublesome  declaimer,  Carlstadt,  declared  that  "  whoso 
falls  sick  shall  use  no  physic,  but  commit  his  case  to  God, 
praying  that  His  will  be  done,"  Luther  asked,  "  Do  you  eat 
when  you  are  hungry  ?  "  and  the  answer  being  in  the  affirma- 
tive, he  continued,  "  Even  so  you  may  use  physic,  which  is 
God's  gift  just  as  meat  and  drink  is,  or  whatever  else  we  use 
for  the  preservation  of  life."  Hence  it  was,  doubtless,  that 
the  Protestant  cities  of  Germany  were  more  ready  than 
others  to  admit  anatomical  investigation  by  proper  dis- 
sections.* 

Perhaps  the  best-known  development  of  a  theological 
view  in  the  Protestant  Church  was  that  mainly  evolved  in 
England  out  of  a  French  germ  of  theological  thought — a 
belief  in  the  efficacy  of  the  royal  touch  in  sundry  diseases, 
especially  epilepsy  and  scrofula,  the  latter  being  conse- 
quently known  as  the  king's  evil.  This  mode  of  cure 
began,  so  far  as  history  throws  light  upon  it,  with  Edward 
the  Confessor  in  the  eleventh  century,  and  came  down  from 
reign  to  reign,  passing  from  the  Catholic  saint  to  Protestant 
debauchees  upon  the  English  throne,  with  ever-increasing 
miraculous  efficacy. 

Testimony  to  the  reality  of  these  cures  is  overwhelming. 
As  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  there  are  no  miracles  of  healing 
in  the  history  of  the  human  race  more  thorough!}'  attested 
than  those  wrought  by  the  touch  of  Henry  VIII,  Elizabeth, 
the  Stuarts,  and  especially  of  that  chosen  vessel,  Charles  II. 
Though  Elizabeth  could  not  bring  herself  fully  to  believe  in 
the  reality  of  these  cures,  Dr.  Tooker,  the  Queen's  chaplain, 
afterward  Dean  of  Lichfield,  testifies  fully  of  his  own  knowl- 
edge to  the  cures  wrought  by  her,  as  also  does  William 
Clowes,  the  Queen's  surgeon.  Fuller,  in  his  Church  History, 
gives  an  account  of  a  Roman  Catholic  who  was  thus  cured 

*  For  Luther's  belief  and  his  answer  to  Carlstadt,  see  his  Table  Talk,  espe- 
cially in  Hazlitt's  edition,  pp.  250-257  ;  also  his  letters  passim.  For  recent  "faith 
cures,"  see  Dr.  Buckley's  articles  on  Faith  Healing  and  Kindred  Phenometia,  in 
The  Century,  1886.  For  the  greater  readiness  of  the  Protestant  cities  to  facilitate 
dissections,  see  Roth,  Andreas  Vesalius,  p.  33. 


FETICH    CURES    UNDER    PROTESTANTISM. 


47 


by  the  Queen's  touch  and  converted  to  Protestantism.  Simi- 
lar testimony  exists  as  to  cures  wrought  by  James  I.  Charles 
I  also  enjoyed  the  same  power,  in  spite  of  the  public  declara- 
tion against  its  reality  by  Parliament.  In  one  case  the  King 
saw  a  patient  in  the  crowd,  too  far  off  to  be  touched,  and 
simply  said,  "  God  bless  thee  and  grant  thee  thy  desire  "  ; 
whereupon,  it  is  asserted,  the  blotches  and  humours  disap- 
peared from  the  patient's  body  and  appeared  in  the  bottle 
of  medicine  which  he  held  in  his  hand  ;  at  least  so  says  Dr. 
John  Nicholas,  Warden  of  Winchester  College,  who  declares 
this  of  his  own  knowledge  to  be  every  word  of  it  true. 

But  the  most  incontrovertible  evidence  of  this  miracu- 
lous gift  is  found  in  the  case  of  Charles  II,  the  most  thor- 
oughly cynical  debauchee  who  ever  sat  on  the  English 
throne  before  the  advent  of  George  IV.  He  touched  nearly 
one  hundred  thousand  persons,  and  the  outlay  for  gold 
medals  issued  to  the  afflicted  on  these  occasions  rose  in 
some  years  as  high  as  ten  thousand  pounds.  John  Brown, 
surgeon  in  ordinary  to  his  Majesty  and  to  St.  Thomas's  Hos- 
pital, and  author  of  many  learned  works  on  surgery  and 
anatomy,  published  accounts  of  sixty  cures  due  to  the  touch 
of  this  monarch  ;  and  Sergeant-Surgeon  Wiseman  devotes  an 
entire  book  to  proving  the  reality  of  these  cures,  saying,  "  I 
myself  have  been  frequent  witness  to  many  hundreds  of 
cures  performed  by  his  Majesty's  touch  alone  without  anv 
assistance  of  chirurgery,  and  these  many  of  them  had  tyred 
out  the  endeavours  of  able  chirurgeons  before  they  came 
thither."  Yet  it  is  especially  instructive  to  note  that,  while 
in  no  other  reign  were  so  many  people  touched  for  scrofula, 
and  in  none  were  so  many  cures  vouched  for,  in  no  other 
reign  did  so  many  people  die  of  that  disease :  the  bills  of 
mortality  show  this  clearly,  and  the  reason  doubtless  is  the 
general  substitution  of  supernatural  for  scientific  means  of 
cure.  This  is  but  one  out  of  many  examples  showing  the 
havoc  which  a  scientific  test  always  makes  among  miracles 
if  men  allow  it  to  be  applied. 

To  James  II  the  same  power  continued  ;  and  if  it  be  said, 
in  the  words  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  "  imagination  is  next  of  kin 
to  miracle — a  working  faith,"  something  else  seems  required 
to  account  for  the  testimony  of  Dr.  Heylin  to  cures  wrought 


48  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

by  the  royal  touch  upon  babes  in  their  mothers'  arms.  Myth- 
making  and  marvel-mongering  were  evidently  at  work  here 
as  in  so  many  other  places,  and  so  great  was  the  fame  of 
these  cures  that  we  find,  in  the  year  before  James  was  de- 
throned, a  pauper  at  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  petitioning 
the  General  Assembly  to  enable  him  to  make  the  voyage  to 
England  in  order  that  he  may  be  healed  by  the  royal  touch. 

The  change  in  the  royal  succession  does  not  seem  to  have 
interfered  with  the  miracle;  for,  though  William  III  evi- 
dently regarded  the  whole  thing  as  a  superstition,  and  on  one 
occasion  is  said  to  have  touched  a  patient,  saying  to  him, 
"  God  give  you  better  health  and  more  sense,"  Whiston 
assures  us  that  this  person  was  healed,  notwithstanding 
William's  incredulity. 

As  to  Queen  Anne,  Dr.  Daniel  Turner,  in  his  Art  of 
Surgery,  relates  that  several  cases  of  scrofula  which  had 
been  unsuccessfully  treated  by  himself  and  Dr.  Charles  Ber- 
nard, sergeant-surgeon  to  her  Majesty,  yielded  afterward  to 
the  efficacy  of  the  Queen's  touch.  Naturally  does  Collier, 
in  his  Ecclesiastical  History,  say  regarding  these  cases  that  to 
dispute  them  "  is  to  come  to  the  extreme  of  scepticism,  to 
deny  our  senses  and  be  incredulous  even  to  ridiculousness." 
Testimony  to  the  reality  of  these  cures  is  indeed  overwhelm- 
ing, and  a  multitude  of  most  sober  scholars,  divines,  and 
doctors  of  medicine  declared  the  evidence  absolutely  con- 
vincing. That  the  Church  of  England  accepted  the  doctrine 
of  the  royal  touch  is  witnessed  by  the  special  service  pro- 
vided in  the  Praycr-Book  of  that  period  for  occasions  when 
the  King  exercised  this  gift.  The  ceremony  was  conducted 
with  great  solemnity  and  pomp  :  during  the  reading  of  the 
service  and  the  laying  on  of  the  King's  hands,  the  attendant 
bishop  or  priest  recited  the  words,  "  They  shall  lay  their 
hands  on  the  sick,  and  they  shall  recover  "  ;  afterward  came 
special  prayers,  the  Epistle  and  Gospel,  with  the  blessing, 
and  finally  his  Majesty  washed  his  royal  hands  in  golden 
vessels  which  high  noblemen  held  for  him. 

In  France,  too,  the  royal  touch  continued,  with  similar 
testimony  to  its  efficacy.  On  a  certain  Easter  Sunday,  that 
pious  king,  Louis  XIV,  touched  about  sixteen  hundred  per- 
sons at  Versailles. 


THE    SCIENTIFIC   STRUGGLE    FOR   ANATOMY.  49 

This  curative  power  was,  then,  acknowledged  far  and 
wide,  by  Catholics  and  Protestants  alike,  upon  the  Con- 
tinent, in  Great  Britain,  and  in  America  ;  and  it  descended 
not  only  in  spite  of  the  transition  of  the  English  kings  from 
Catholicism  to  Protestantism,  but  in  spite  of  the  transition 
from  the  legitimate  sovereignty  of  the  Stuarts  to  the  illegiti- 
mate succession  of  the  House  of  Orange.  And  yet,  within  a 
few  years  after  the  whole  world  held  this  belief,  it  was  dead  ; 
it  had  shrivelled  away  in  the  growing  scientific  light  at  the 
dawn  of  the  eighteenth  century.* 


IX.   THE   SCIENTIFIC    STRUGGLE   FOR   ANATOMY. 

We  may  now  take  up  the  evolution  of  medical  science 
out  of  the  mediaeval  view  and  its  modern  survivals.  All 
through  the  Middle  Ages,  as  we  have  seen,  some  few  laymen 
and  ecclesiastics  here  and  there,  braving  the  edicts  of  the 
Church  and  popular  superstition,  persisted  in  medical  study 
and  practice  :  this  was  especially  seen  at  the  greater  univer- 
sities, which  had  become  somewhat  emancipated  from  eccle- 
siastical control.  In  the  thirteenth  century  the  University 
of  Paris  gave  a  strong  impulse  to  the  teaching  of  medicine, 
and  in  that  and  the  following  century  we  begin  to  find  the 
first  intelligible  reports  of  medical  cases  since  the  coming  in 
of  Christianity. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  also  the  arch-enemy  of  the 
papacy,  the  Emperor  Frederick  II,  showed  his  free-thinking 
tendencies  by  granting,  from  time  to  time,  permissions  to  dis- 
sect the  human  subject.  In  the  centuries  following,  sundry 
other  monarchs  timidly  followed  his  example:  thus  John  of 

*  For  the  royal  touch,  see  Becket,  Free  and  Impartial  Inquiry  into  the  Antiquity 
and  Efficacy  of  Touching  for  the  King's  Evil,  1772,  cited  in  Pettigrew,  p.  128,  and 
eLewhere  ;  also  Scoffern,  Science  and  Folk  Lore,  London,  1S70,  pp.  413  and  fol- 
lowing ;  also  Adams,  The  Healing  Art,  London,  1887,  vol.  i,  pp.  53-60  ;  and 
especially  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  i,  chapter  on  The  Conversion  of 
Rome;  also  his  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  i,  chap.  i.  For 
curious  details  regarding  the  mode  of  conducting  the  ceremony,  see  Evelyn's  Diary  ; 
also  Lecky,  as  above.  For  the  royal  touch  in  France,  and  for  a  claim  to  its  posses- 
sion in  feudal  times  by  certain  noble  families,  see  Rambaud,  Hist,  de  la  Civ.  fran- 
caise,  p.  375. 

32 


50  FROM    MIRACLES    TO    MEDICINE. 

Aragon,  in  1391,  gave  to  the  University  of  Lerida  the  privi- 
lege of  dissecting  one  dead  criminal  every  three  years.* 

During  the  fifteenth  century  and  the  earlier  years  of  the 
sixteenth  the  revival  of  learning,  the  invention  of  printing, 
and  the  great  voyages  of  discovery  gave  a  new  impulse  to 
thought,  and  in  this  medical  science  shared  :  the  old  theo- 
logical way  of  thinking  was  greatly  questioned,  and  gave 
place  in  many  quarters  to  a  different  way  of  looking  at  the 
universe. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  Paracelsus  appears — a  great 
genius,  doing  much  to  develop  medicine  beyond  the  reach 
of  sacred  and  scholastic  tradition,  though  still  fettered  by 
many  superstitions.  More  and  more,  in  spite  of  theological 
dogmas,  came  a  renewal  of  anatomical  studies  by  dissection 
of  the  human  subject.  The  practice  of  the  old  Alexandrian 
School  was  thus  resumed.  Mundinus,  Professor  of  Medicine 
at  Bologna  early  in  the  fourteenth  century,  dared  use  the 
human  subject  occasionally  in  his  lectures ;  but  finally  came 
a  far  greater  champion  of  scientific  truth,  Andreas  Vesalius, 
founder  of  the  modern  science  of  anatomy.  The  battle 
waged  by  this  man  is  one  of  the  glories  of  our  race. 

From  the  outset  Vesalius  proved  himself  a  master.  In 
the  search  for  real  knowledge  he  risked  the  most  terrible 
dangers,  and  especially  the  charge  of  sacrilege,  founded 
upon  the  teachings  of  the  Church  for  ages.  As  we  have 
seen,  even  such  men  in  the  early  Church  as  Tertullian  and 
St.  Augustine  held  anatomy  in  abhorrence,  and  the  decretal 
of  Pope  Boniface  VIII  was  universally  construed  as  forbid- 
ding all  dissection,  and  as  threatening  excommunication 
against  those  practising  it.  Through  this  sacred  conven- 
tionalism Vesalius  broke  without  fear ;  despite  ecclesiastical 
censure,  great  opposition  in  his  own  profession,  and  popular 
fury,  he  studied  his  science  by  the  only  method  that  could 
give  useful  results.  No  peril  daunted  him.  To  secure  ma- 
terial for  his  investigations,  he  haunted  gibbets  and  charnel- 
houses,  braving  the  fires  of  the  Inquisition  and  the  virus  of 
the  plague.    First  of  all  men  he  began  to  place  the  science  of 


*  For  the  promotion  of  medical  science  and  practice,  especially  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  by  the  universities,  see  Baas,  pp.  222-224. 


THE    SCIENTIFIC    STRUGGLE    FOR   ANATOMY.  51 

human  anatomy  on  its  solid  modern  foundations — on  careful 
examination  and  observation  of  the  human  body :  this  was 
his  first  great  sin,  and  it  was  soon  aggravated  by  one  consid- 
ered even  greater. 

Perhaps  the  most  unfortunate  thing  that  has  ever  been 
done  for  Christianity  is  the  tying  it  to  forms  of  science  which 
are  doomed  and  gradually  sinking.  Just  as,  in  the  time  of 
Roger  Bacon,  excellent  men  devoted  all  their  energies  to 
binding  Christianity  to  Aristotle;  just  as,  in  the  time  of 
Reuchlin  and  Erasmus,  they  insisted  on  binding  Christianity 
to  Thomas  Aquinas ;  so,  in  the  time  of  Vesalius,  such  men 
made  every  effort  to  link  Christianity  to  Galen.  The  cry 
has  been  the  same  in  all  ages ;  it  is  the  same  which  we  hear 
in  this  age  for  curbing  scientific  studies :  the  cry  for  what  is 
called  "  sound  learning."  Whether  standing  for  Aristotle 
against  Bacon,  or  for  Aquinas  against  Erasmus,  or  for  Galen 
against  Vesalius,  the  cry  is  always  for  "  sound  learning " : 
the  idea  always  has  been  that  the  older  studies  are  "safe." 

At  twenty-eight  years  of  age  Vesalius  gave  to  the  world 
his  great  work  on  human  anatomy.  With  it  ended  the  old 
and  began  the  new;  its  researches,  by  their  thoroughness, 
were  a  triumph  of  science;  its  illustrations,  by  their  fidelity, 
were  a  triumph  of  art. 

To  shield  himself,  as  far  as  possible,  in  the  battle  which 
he  foresaw  must  come,  Vesalius  dedicated  the  work  to  the 
Emperor  Charles  V,  and  in  his  preface  he  argues  for  his 
method,  and  against  the  parrot  repetitions  of  the  mediaeval 
text-books  ;  he  also  condemns  the  wretched  anatomical  prep- 
arations and  specimens  made  by  physicians  who  utterly 
refused  to  advance  beyond  the  ancient  master.  The  parrot- 
like repeaters  of  Galen  gave  battle  at  once.  After  the  man- 
ner of  their  time  their  first  missiles  were  epithets ;  and,  the 
vast  arsenal  of  these  having  been  exhausted,  they  began  to 
use  sharper  weapons — weapons  theologic. 

In  this  case  there  were  especial  reasons  why  the  theo- 
logical authorities  felt  called  upon  to  intervene.  First,  there 
was  the  old  idea  prevailing  in  the  Church  that  the  dissec- 
tion of  the  human  body  is  forbidden  to  Christians :  this  was 
used  with  great  force  against  Vesalius,  but  he  at  first  gained 
a  temporary  victory  ;  for,  a  conference  of  divines  having  been 


52  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

asked  to  decide  whether  dissection  of  the  human  body  is 
sacrilege,  gave  a  decision  in  the  negative. 

The  reason  was  simple  :  the  great  Emperor  Charles  V 
had  made  Vesalius  his  physician  and  could  not  spare  him  ; 
but,  on  the  accession  of  Philip  II  to  the  throne  of  Spain  and 
the  Netherlands,  the  whole  scene  changed.  Vesalius  now 
complained  that  in  Spain  he  could  not  obtain  even  a  human 
skull  for  his  anatomical  investigations :  the  medical  and  theo- 
logical reactionists  had  their  way,  and  to  all  appearance  they 
have,  as  a  rule,  had  it  in  Spain  ever  since.  As  late  as  the 
last  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  an  observant  English 
traveller  found  that  there  were  no  dissections  before  medical 
classes  in  the  Spanish  universities,  and  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  circulation  of  the  blood  was  still  denied,  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half  after  Sarpi  and  Harvey  had  proved  it. 

Another  theological  idea  barred  the  path  of  Vesalius. 
Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  believed  that  there  ex- 
ists in  man  a  bone  imponderable,  incorruptible,  incombustible 
— the  necessary  nucleus  of  the  resurrection  body.  Belief  in  a 
resurrection  of  the  physical  body,  despite  St.  Paul's  Epistle 
to  the  Corinthians,  had  been  incorporated  into  the  formula 
evolved  during  the  early  Christian  centuries  and  known  as 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  was  held  throughout  Christendom, 
"  always,  everywhere,  and  by  all."  This  hypothetical  bone 
was  therefore  held  in  great  veneration,  and  many  anatomists 
sought  to  discover  it ;  but  Vesalius,  revealing  so  much  else, 
did  not  find  it.  He  contented  himself  with  saying  that  he 
left  the  question  regarding  the  existence  of  such  a  bone  to 
the  theologians.  He  could  not  lie ;  he  did  not  wish  to  fight 
the  Inquisition  ;  and  thus  he  fell  under  suspicion. 

The  strength  of  this  theological  point  may  be  judged 
from  the  fact  that  no  less  eminent  a  surgeon  than  Riolan 
consulted  the  executioner  to  find  out  whether,  when  he 
burned  a  criminal,  all  the  parts  were  consumed  ;  and  only 
then  was  the  answer  received  which  fatally  undermined  this 
superstition.  Yet,  in  1689  we  find  it  still  lingering  in  France, 
stimulating  opposition  in  the  Church  to  dissection.  Even  as 
late  as  the  eighteenth  century,  Bernouilli  having  shown  that 
the  living  human  body  constantly  undergoes  a  series  of 
changes,  so  that  all  its  particles  are  renewed  in  a  given  num- 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   STRUGGLE   FOR   ANATOMY. 


53 


ber  of  years,  so  much  ill  feeling  was  drawn  upon  him,  from 
theologians,  who  saw  in  this  statement  danger  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  that  for  the  sake  of 
peace  he  struck  out  his  argument  on  this  subject  from  his 
collected  works.* 

Still  other  enroachments  upon  the  theological  view  were 
made  by  the  new  school  of  anatomists,  and  especially  by 
Vesalius.  During  the  Middle  Ages  there  had  been  devel- 
oped various  theological  doctrines  regarding  the  human 
body  ;  these  were  based  upon  arguments  showing  what  the 
body  ought  to  be,  and  naturally,  when  anatomical  science 
showed  what  it  is,  these  doctrines  fell.  An  example  of  such 
popular  theological  reasoning  is  seen  in  a  widespread  belief 
of  the  twelfth  century,  that,  during  the  year  in  which  the 
cross  of  Christ  was  captured  by  Saladin,  children,  instead  of 
having  thirty  or  thirty-two  teeth  as  before,  had  twenty  or 
twenty-two.  So,  too,  in  Vesalius's  time  another  doctrine  of 
this  sort  was  dominant:  it  had  long  been  held  that  Eve,  hav- 
ing been  made  by  the  Almighty  from  a  rib  taken  out  of 
Adam's  side,  there  must  be  one  rib  fewer  on  one  side  of 
every  man  than  on  the  other.     This  creation  of  Eve  was  a 


*  For  permissions  to  dissect  the  human  subject,  given  here  and  there  during  the 
Middle  Ages,  see  Roth's  Andreas  Vesalius,  Berlin,  1892,  pp.  3,  13  et  sea.  For  re- 
ligious antipathies  as  a  factor  in  the  persecution  of  Vesalius,  see  the  biographies  by 
Boerhaave  and  Albinos,  1725  ;  Burggraeve's  Etudes,  1841  ;  also  Haeser,  Kingsley, 
and  the  latest  and  most  thorough  of  all,  Roth,  as  above.  Even  Goethals,  despite 
the  timidity  natural  to  a  city  librarian  in  a  town  like  Brussels,  in  which  clerical 
power  is  strong  and  relentless,  feels  obliged  to  confess  that  there  was  a  certain  admix- 
ture of  religious  hatred  in  the  treatment  of  Vesalius.  See  his  Notice  Biographique 
sur  Andre'  Vesale.  For  the  resurrection  bone,  see  Roth,  as  above,  pp.  154,  155, 
and  notes.  For  Vesalius,  see  especially  Portal,  Hist,  de  VAnatomie  et  de  la  Chirurgie, 
Paris,  1770,  tome  i,  p.  407.  For  neglect  of  dissection  and  opposition  to  Harvey's 
discovery  in  Spain,  see  Townsend's  Travels,  edition  of  1792,  cited  in  Buckle,  His- 
tory of  Civilization  in  England,  vol.  ii,  pp.  74,  75.  Also  Henry  Morley,  in  his  Cle- 
ment Marot,  and  Other  Essays.  For  Bernouilli  and  his  trouble  with  the  theologians, 
see  Wolf,  Biographien  zur  Culturgeschichte  der  Schweiz,  vol.  ii,  p.  95.  How  different 
Mundinus's  practice  of  dissection  was  from  that  of  Vesalius  may  be  seen  by  Cu- 
vier's  careful  statement  that  the  entire  number  of  dissections  by  the  former  was 
three  ;  the  usual  statement  is  that  there  were  but  two.  See  Cuvier,  Hist,  des  Sci. 
Nat.,  tome  ii,  p.  7  ;  also  Sprengel,  Fredault,  Hallam,  and  Littre ;  also  Whewell, 
Hist,  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  vol.  iii,  p.  328  ;  also,  for  a  very  full  statement  re- 
garding the  agency  of  Mundinus  in  the  progress  of  anatomy,  see  Portal,  vol.  i,  pp. 
209-216. 


54 


FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 


favourite  subject  with  sculptors  and  painters,  from  Giotto, 
who  carved  it  upon  his  beautiful  Campanile  at  Florence,  to 
the  illuminators  of  missals,  and  even  to  those  who  illustrated 
Bibles  and  religious  books  in  the  first  years  after  the  inven- 
tion of  printing ;  but  Vesalius  and  the  anatomists  who  fol- 
lowed him  put  an  end  among  thoughtful  men  to  this  belief 
in  the  missing  rib,  and  in  doing  this  dealt  a  blow  at  much 
else  in  the  sacred  theory.  Naturally,  all  these  considerations 
brought  the  forces  of  ecclesiasticism  against  the  innovators 
in  anatomy.* 

A  new  weapon  was  now  forged :  Vesalius  was  charged 
with  dissecting  a  living  man,  and,  either  from  direct  per- 
secution, as  the  great  majority  of  authors  assert,  or  from  in- 
direct influences,  as  the  recent  apologists  for  Philip  II  admit, 
he  became  a  wanderer:  on  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Land, 
apparently  undertaken  to  atone  for  his  sin,  he  was  ship- 
wrecked, and  in  the  prime  of  his  life  and  strength  he  was 
lost  to  the  world. 

And  yet  not  lost.  In  this  century  a  great  painter  has 
again  given  him  to  us.  By  the  magic  of  Hamann's  pencil 
Vesalius  again  stands  on  earth,  and  we  look  once  more  into 
his  cell.  Its  windows  and  doors,  bolted  and  barred  within, 
betoken  the  storm  of  bigotry  which  rages  without;  the  cru- 
cifix, toward  which  he  turns  his  eyes,  symbolizes  the  spirit 
in  which  he  labours;  the  corpse  of  the  plague-stricken  be- 
neath his  hand  ceases  to  be  repulsive ;  his  very  soul  seems 
to  send  forth  rays  from  the  canvas,  which  strengthen  us  for 
the  good  fight  in  this  age.  f 

His  death  was  hastened,  if  not  caused,  by  men  who  con- 
scientiously supposed  that  he  was  injuring  religion  :  his  poor, 
blind  foes  aided  in  destroying  one  of  religion's  greatest 
apostles.     What  was  his  influence  on  religion  ?     He  substi- 

*  As  to  the  supposed  change  in  the  number  of  teeth,  see  the  Gesta  Pliilippi 
Aitgusti  Francorum  Regis,  .  .  .  descripta  a  magistro  Rigordo,  1219,  edited  by 
Father  Francois  Duchesne,  in  Historic  Francorum  Scriptores,  torn,  v,  Paris,  1649, 
p.  24.  For  representations  of  Adam  created  by  the  Almighty  out  of  a  pile  of  dust, 
and  of  Eve  created  from  a  rib  of  Adam,  see  the  earlier  illustrations  in  the  Nurem- 
berg Chronicle.  As  to  the  relation  of  anatomy  to  theology  as  regards  Adam's  rib, 
see  Roth,  pp.  154,  155. 

f  The  original  painting  of  Vesalius  at  work  in  his  cell,  by  Hamann,  is  now  at 
Cornell  University. 


THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO    INOCULATION. 


55 


tuted,  for  the  repetition  of  worn-out  theories,  a  conscientious 
and  reverent  search  into  the  works  of  the  great  Power  giv- 
ing life  to  the  universe  ;  he  substituted,  for  representations 
of  the  human  structure  pitiful  and  unreal,  representations 
revealing  truths  most  helpful  to  the  whole  human  race. 

The  death  of  this  champion  seems  to  have  virtually  ended 
the  contest.  Licenses  to  dissect  soon  began  to  be  given  by 
sundry  popes  to  universities,  and  were  renewed  at  intervals 
of  from  three  to  four  years,  until  the  Reformation  set  in  mo- 
tion trains  of  thought  which  did  much  to  release  science 
from  this  yoke.* 


X.    THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO   INOCULATION,   VACCINA- 
TION,   AND   THE    USE   OF   ANAESTHETICS. 

I  hasten  now  to  one  of  the  most  singular  struggles  of 
medical  science  during  modern  times.  Early  in  the  last  cen- 
tury Boyer  presented  inoculation  as  a  preventive  of  small- 
pox in  France,  and  thoughtful  physicians  in  England,  in- 
spired by  Lady  Montagu  and  Maitland,  followed  his  example. 
Ultra-conservatives  in  medicine  took  fright  at  once  on  both 
sides  of  the  Channel,  and  theology  was  soon  finding  pro- 
found reasons  against  the  new  practice.  The  French  theo- 
logians of  the  Sorbonne  solemnly  condemned  it ;  the  English 
theologians  were  most  loudly  represented  by  the  Rev.  Ed- 
ward Massey,  who  in  1772  preached  and  published  a  sermon 
entitled  TJie  Dangerous  and  Sinful  Practice  of  Inoculation.  In 
this  he  declared  that  Job's  distemper  was  probably  confluent 
smallpox ;  that  he  had  been  inoculated  doubtless  by  the 
devil ;  that  diseases  are  sent  by  Providence  for  the  punish- 
ment of  sin  ;  and  that  the  proposed  attempt  to  prevent  them 
is  "  a  diabolical  operation."  Not  less  vigorous  was  the  ser- 
mon of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Delafaye,  entitled  Inoculation  an  Inde- 

*  For  a  curious  example  of  weapons  drawn  from  Galen  and  used  against  Vesa- 
lius,  see  Lewes,  Life  of  Goethe,  p.  343.  note.  For  proofs  that  I  have  not  overesti- 
mated Vesalius,  see  Portal,  ubi  supra.  Portal  speaks  of  him  as  "  le  g/nie  le plus  droit 
qu'eut  I'  Europe  "  ;  and  again,  "  Vesale  me  par  ait  un  des  plus  grands  hommes  qui  ait 
exist/."  For  the  charge  that  anatomists  dissected  living  men — against  men  of  sci- 
ence before  Vesalius's  time — see  Littre's  chapter  on  Anatomy.  For  the  increased 
liberty  given  anatomy  by  the  Reformation,  see  Roth's  Vesalius,  p.  33. 


56  FROM   MIRACLES    TO    MEDICINE. 

fensible  Practice.  This  struggle  went  on  for  thirty  years. 
It  is  a  pleasure  to  note  some  churchmen — and  among  them 
Madox,  Bishop  of  Worcester — giving  battle  on  the  side  of 
right  reason;  but  as  late  as  1753  we  have  a  noted  rector 
at  Canterbury  denouncing  inoculation  from  his  pulpit  in  the 
primatial  city,  and  many  of  his  brethren  following  his  example. 

The  same  opposition  was  vigorous  in  Protestant  Scot- 
land. A  large  body  of  ministers  joined  in  denouncing  the 
new  practice  as  "  flying  in  the  face  of  Providence,"  and  "  en- 
deavouring to  baffle  a  Divine  judgment." 

On  our  own  side  of  the  ocean,  also,  this  question  had  to 
be  fought  out.  About  the  year  1721  Dr.  Zabdiel  Boylston, 
a  physician  in  Boston,  made  an  experiment  in  inoculation, 
one  of  his  first  subjects  being  his  own  son.  He  at  once  en- 
countered bitter  hostility,  so  that  the  selectmen  of  the  city 
forbade  him  to  repeat  the  experiment.  Foremost  among  his 
opponents  was  Dr.  Douglas,  a  Scotch  physician,  supported 
by  the  medical  profession  and  the  newspapers.  The  vio- 
lence of  the  opposing  party  knew  no  bounds  ;  they  insisted 
that  inoculation  was  "  poisoning,"  and  they  urged  the  author- 
ities to  try  Dr.  Boylston  for  murder.  Having  thus  settled 
his  case  for  this  world,  they  proceeded  to  settle  it  for  the 
next,  insisting  that  "  for  a  man  to  infect  a  family  in  the  morn- 
ing with  smallpox  and  to  pray  to  God  in  the  evening  against 
the  disease  is  blasphemy";  that  the  smallpox  is  "a  judg- 
ment of  God  on  the  sins  of  the  people,"  and  that  "  to  avert 
it  is  but  to  provoke  him  more  "  ;  that  inoculation  is  "  an  en- 
croachment on  the  prerogatives  of  Jehovah,  whose  right  it  is 
to  wound  and  smite."  Among  the  mass  of  scriptural  texts 
most  remote  from  any  possible  bearing  on  the  subject  one 
was  employed  wmich  was  equally  cogent  against  any  use  of 
healing  means  in  any  disease — the  words  of  Hosea :  "  He 
hath  torn,  and  he  will  heal  us ;  he  hath  smitten,  and  he  will 
bind  us  up." 

So  bitter  was  this  opposition  that  Dr.  Boylston's  life  was 
in  danger ;  it  was  considered  unsafe  for  him  to  be  out  of  his 
house  in  the  evening ;  a  lighted  grenade  was  even  thrown 
into  the  house  of  Cotton  Mather,  who  had  favoured  the  new 
practice,  and  had  sheltered  another  clergyman  who  had  sub- 
mitted himself  to  it. 


THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO   INOCULATION. 

To  the  honour  of  the  Puritan  clergy  of  New  Eno-land  it 
should  be  said  that  many  of  them  were  Boylston's  strongest 
supporters.  Increase  and  Cotton  Mather  had  been  amono- 
the  first  to  move  in  favour  of  inoculation,  the  latter  having 
called  Boylston's  attention  to  it ;  and  at  the  very  crisis  of 
affairs  six  of  the  leading  clergymen  of  Boston  threw  their 
influence  on  Boylston's  side  and  shared  the  obloquy  brought 
upon  him.  Although  the  gainsayers  were  not  slow  to  fling 
into  the  faces  of  the  Mathers  their  action  regarding  witch- 
craft, urging  that  their  credulity  in  that  matter  argued 
credulity  in  this,  they  persevered,  and  among  the  many  serv- 
ices rendered  by  the  clergymen  of  New  England  to  their 
country  this  ought  certainly  to  be  i-emembered  ;  for  these 
men  had  to  withstand,  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  Boylston 
and  Benjamin  Franklin,  the  same  weapons  which  were  hurled 
at  the  supporters  of  inoculation  in  Europe — charges  of  "un- 
faithfulness to  the  revealed  law  of  God." 

The  facts  were  soon  very  strong  against  the  gainsayers : 
within  a  year  or  two  after  the  first  experiment  nearly  three 
hundred  persons  had  been  inoculated  by  Boylston  in  Boston 
and  neighbouring  towns,  and  out  of  these  only  six  had  died  ; 
whereas,  during  the  same  period,  out  of  nearly  six  thousand 
persons  who  had  taken  smallpox  naturally,  and  had  "received 
only  the  usual  medical  treatment,  nearly  one  thousand  had 
died.  Yet  even  here  the  gainsayers  did  not  despair,  and, 
when  obliged  to  confess  the  success  of  inoculation,  the}-  sim- 
ply fell  back  upon  a  new  argument,  and  answered  :  "  It  was 
good  that  Satan  should  be  dispossessed  of  his  habitation 
which  he  had  taken  up  in  men  in  our  Lord's  da}-,  but  it  was 
not  lawful  that  the  children  of  the  Pharisees  should  cast  him 
out  by  the  help  of  Beelzebub.  We  must  always  have  an  eye 
to  the  matter  of  what  we  do  as  well  as  the  result,  if  we  in- 
tend to  keep  a  good  conscience  toward  God."  But  the  facts 
were  too  strong;  the  new  practice  made  its  way  in  the  New 
World  as  in  the  Old,  though  bitter  opposition  continued, 
and  in  no  small  degree  on  vague  scriptural  grounds,  for 
more  than  twenty  years  longer.* 

*  For  the  general  subject,  see  Sprengel,  Histoire  de  la  MMecine,  vol.  vi,  pp. 
39-80.  For  the  opposition  of  the  Paris  Faculty  of  Theology  to  inoculation,  see 
the  Journal  de  Barbier,  vol.  vi,  p.  294 ;  also  the   Correspondance  de  Grimm  et  de 


53 


FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 


The  steady  evolution  of  scientific  medicine  brings  us 
next  to  Jenner's  discovery  of  vaccination.  Here,  too,  sun- 
dry vague  survivals  of  theological  ideas  caused  many  of  the 
clergy  to  side  with  retrograde  physicians.  Perhaps  the 
most  virulent  of  Jenner's  enemies  was  one  of  his  professional 
brethren,  Dr.  Moseley,  who  placed  on  the  title-page  of  his 
book,  Lues  Bovilla,  the  motto,  referring  to  Jenner  and  his 
followers,  "  Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what 
they  do  "  :  this  book  of  Dr.  Moseley  was  especially  indorsed 
by  the  Bishop  of  Dromore.  In  1798  an  Anti-vaccination  So- 
ciety was  formed  by  physicians  and  clergymen,  who  called 
on  the  people  of  Boston  to  suppress  vaccination,  as  "  bidding 
defiance  to  Heaven  itself,  even  to  the  will  of  God,"  and  de- 
clared that  "  the  law  of  God  prohibits  the  practice."  As  late 
as  1803  the  Rev.  Dr.  Ramsden  thundered  against  vaccina- 
tion in  a  sermon  before  the  University  of  Cambridge,  min- 
gling texts  of  Scripture  with  calumnies  against  Jenner ;  but 
Plumptre  and  the  Rev.  Rowland  Hill  in  England,  Water- 
house  in  America,  Thouret  in  France,  Sacco  in  Italy,  and  a 
host  of  other  good  men  and  true,  pressed  forward,  and  at 
last  science,  humanity,  and  right  reason  gained  the  victory. 
Most  striking  results  quickly  followed.  The  diminution  in 
the  number  of  deaths  from  the. terrible  scourge  was  amazing. 
In  Berlin,  during  the  eight  years  following  1783,  over  four 
thousand  children  died  of  the  smallpox ;  while  during  the 

Diderot,  vol.  iii,  pp.  259  et  seq.  For  bitter  denunciations  of  inoculation  by  the 
English  clergy,  and  for  the  noble  stand  against  them  by  Madox,  see  Baron,  Life  of 
Jenner,  vol  i,  pp.  231,  232,  and  vol.  ii,  pp.  39,  40.  For  the  strenuous  opposition 
of  the  same  clergy,  see  Weld,  History  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  i,  p.  464,  note  ; 
also,  for  its  comical  side,  see  Nichols's  Literary  Lllustrations,  vol.  v,  p.  800.  For 
the  same  matter  in  Scotland,  see  Lecky's  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Ce?itury,  vol.  ii, 
p.  83.  For  New  England,  see  Green,  History  of  Medicine  in  Massachusetts,  Bos- 
ton, 1881,  pp.  58  et  seq.  ;  also  chapter  x  of  the  Memorial  History  of  Boston,  by  the 
same  author  and  O.  W.  Holmes.  For  letter  of  Dr.  Franklin,  see  Massachusetts 
Histo>ical  Collections,  second  series,  vol.  vii,  p.  17.  Several  most  curious  publica- 
tions issued  during  the  heat  of  the  inoculation  controversy  have  been  kindly  placed 
in  my  hands  by  the  librarians  of  Harvard  College  and  of  the  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society,  among  them  A  Reply  to  Lncrease  Mather,  by  John  Williams,  Bos- 
ton, printed  by  J.  Franklin,  1721,  from  which  the  above  scriptural  arguments  are 
cited.  For  the  terrible  virulence  of  the  smallpox  in  New  England  up  to  the  in- 
troduction of  inoculation,  see  McMaster,  History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States, 
first  edition,  vol.  i,  p.  30. 


THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO   INOCULATION.  eg 

eight  years  following  1814,  after  vaccination  had  been  largely 
adopted,  out  of  a  larger  number  of  deaths  there  were  but 
five  hundred  and  thirty-five  from  this  disease.  In  Wiirtem- 
berg,  during  the  twenty-four  years  following  1772,  one  in 
thirteen  of  all  the  children  died  of  smallpox,  while  durino- 
the  eleven  years  after  1822  there  died  of  it  only  one  in  six- 
teen hundred.  In  Copenhagen,  during  twelve  years  before 
the  introduction  of  vaccination,  fifty-five  hundred  persons 
died  of  smallpox,  and  during  the  sixteen  years  after  its  intro- 
duction only  one  hundred  and  fifty-eight  persons  died  of  it 
throughout  all  Denmark.  In  Vienna,  where  the  average 
yearly  mortality  from  this  disease  had  been  over  eight  hun- 
dred, it  was  steadily  and  rapidly  reduced,  until  in  1803  it  had 
fallen  to  less  than  thirty ;  and  in  London,  formerly  so 
afflicted  by  this  scourge,  out  of  all  her  inhabitants  there  died 
of  it  in  1890  but  one.  As  to  the  world  at  large,  the  result  is 
summed  up  by  one  of  the  most  honoured  English  physicians 
of  our  time,  in  the  declaration  that  "Jenner  has  saved,  is  now 
saving,  and  will  continue  to  save  in  all  coming  ages,  more 
lives  in  one  generation  than  were  destroyed  in  all  the  wars 
of  Napoleon." 

It  will  have  been  noticed  by  those  who  have  read  this 
history  thus  far  that  the  record  of  the  Church  generallv  was 
far  more  honourable  in  this  struggle  than  in  many  which 
preceded  it:  the  reason  is  not  difficult  to  find;  the  decline 
of  theology  enured  to  the  advantage  of  religion,  and  religion 
gave  powerful  aid  to  science. 

Yet  there  have  remained  some  survivals  both  in  Protest- 
antism and  in  Catholicism  which  may  be  regarded  with  cu- 
riosity. A  small  body  of  perversely  ingenious  minds  in  the 
medical  profession  in  England  have  found  a  few  ardent  allies 
among  the  less  intellectual  clergy.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Rothery 
and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Allen,  of  the  Primitive  Methodists,  have 
for  sundry  vague  theological  reasons  especially  distinguished 
themselves  by  opposition  to  compulsory  vaccination  ;  but  it 
is  only  just  to  say  that  the  great  body  of  the  English  clergy 
have  for  a  lonsr  time  taken  the  better  view. 

Far  more  painful  has  been  the  recent  history  of  the  other 
great  branch  of  the  Christian  Church — a  history  developed 
where  it  might  have  been  least  expected  :  the  recent  annals 


60  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

of  the  world   hardly  present  a  more  striking  antithesis  be- 
tween Religion  and  Theology. 

On  the  religious  side  few  things  in  the  history  of  the 
Roman  Church  have  been  more  beautiful  than  the  conduct 
of  its  clergy  in  Canada  during  the  great  outbreak  of  ship- 
fever  among  immigrants  at  Montreal  about  the  middle  of  the 
present  century.  Day  and  night  the  Catholic  priesthood  of 
that  city  ministered  fearlessly  to  those  victims  of  sanitary 
ignorance  ;  fear  of  suffering  and  death  could  not  drive  these 
ministers  from  their  work ;  they  laid  down  their  lives  cheer- 
fully while  carrying  comfort  to  the  poorest  and  most  igno- 
rant of  our  kind  :  such  was  the  record  of  their  religion.  But 
in  1885  a  record  was  made  by  their  theology.  In  that  year  the 
smallpox  broke  out  with  great  virulence  in  Montreal.  The 
Protestant  population  escaped  almost  entirely  by  vaccination; 
but  multitudes  of  their  Catholic  fellow-citizens,  under  some 
vague  survival  of  the  old  orthodox  ideas,  refused  vaccination 
and  suffered  fearfully.  When  at  last  the  plague  became  so 
serious  that  travel  and  trade  fell  off  greatly  and  quarantine 
began  to  be  established  in  neighbouring  cities,  an  effort  was 
made  to  enforce  compulsory  vaccination.  The  result  was, 
that  large  numbers  of  the  Catholic  working  population  re- 
sisted and  even  threatened  bloodshed.  The  clergy  at  first 
tolerated  and  even  encouraged  this  conduct :  the  Abbe  Filia- 
trault,  priest  of  St.  James's  Church,  declared  in  a  sermon 
that,  "  if  we  are  afflicted  with  smallpox,  it  is  because  we  had 
a  carnival  last  winter,  feasting  the  flesh,  which  has  offended 
the  Lord  ;  ...  it  is  to  punish  our  pride  that  God  has  sent  us 
smallpox."  The  clerical  press  went  further:  the  Etendard 
exhorted  the  faithful  to  take  up  arms  rather  than  submit  to 
vaccination,  and  at  least  one  of  the  secular  papers  was  forced 
to  pander  to  the  same  sentiment.  The  Board  of  Health 
struggled  against  this  superstition,  and  addressed  a  circular 
to  the  Catholic  clergy,  imploring  them  to  recommend  vac- 
cination ;  but,  though  two  or  three  complied  with  this  re- 
quest, the  great  majority  were  either  silent  or  openly  hos- 
tile. The  Oblate  Fathers,  whose  church  was  situated  in  the 
very  heart  of  the  infected  district,  continued  to  denounce 
vaccination ;  the  faithful  were  exhorted  to  rely  on  devo- 
tional exercises  of  various  sorts ;  under  the  sanction  of  the 


THEOLOGICAL   OPPOSITION    TO    INOCULATION.  6 1 

hierarchy  a  great  procession  was  ordered  with  a  solemn  ap- 
peal to  the  Virgin,  and  the  use  of  the  rosary  was  carefully 
specified. 

Meantime,  the  disease,  which  had  nearly  died  out  amono- 
the  Protestants,  raged  with  ever-increasing  virulence  among 
the  Catholics  ;  and,  the  truth  becoming  more  and  more  clear, 
even  to  the  most  devout,  proper  measures  were  at  last  en- 
forced and  the  plague  was  stayed,  though  not  until  there  had 
been  a  fearful  waste  of  life  among  these  simple-hearted  be- 
lievers, and  germs  of  scepticism  planted  in  the  hearts  of  their 
children  which  will  bear  fruit  for  generations  to  come.* 

Another  class  of  cases  in  which  the  theologic  spirit  has 
allied  itself  with  the  retrograde  party  in  medical  science  is 
found  in  the  history  of  certain  remedial  agents;  and  first 
may  be  named  cocaine.  As  early  as  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century  the  value  of  coca  had  been  discovered  in 
South  America  ;  the  natives  of  Peru  prized  it  highly,  and 
two  eminent  Jesuits,  Joseph  Acosta  and  Antonio  Julian,  were 
converted  to  this  view.  But  the  conservative  spirit  in  the 
Church  was  too  strong  ;  in  1567  the  Second  Council  of  Lima, 
consisting  of  bishops  from  all  parts  of  South  America,  con. 
demned  it,  and  two  years  later  came  a  royal  decree  declar- 
ing that  "the  notions  entertained  by  the  natives  regarding  it 
are  an  illusion  of  the  devil." 

As  a  pendant  to  this  singular  mistake  on  the  part  of  the 
older  Church  came  another  committed  by  many  Protestants. 
In  the  early  years  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  Jesuit  mis- 
sionaries in  South  America  learned  from  the  natives  the 
value  of  the  so-called    Peruvian   bark  in  the  treatment  of 

*  For  the  opposition  of  conscientious  men  to  vaccination  in  England,  see  Baron, 
Life  of  Jenner,  as  above  ;  also  vol.  ii,  p.  43  ;  also  Duns's  Life  of  Simpson,  Lon- 
don, 1S73,  pp.  248,  249  ;  also  Works  of  Sir  J.  Y.  Simpson,  vol.  ii.  For  a  multi- 
tude of  statistics  showing  the  diminution  of  smallpox  after  the  introduction  of  vac- 
cination, see  Russell,  p.  380.  For  the  striking  record  in  London  for  1890,  see  an 
article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  January,  1891.  The  general  statement  referred 
to  was  made  in  a  speech  some  years  since  by  Sir  Spencer  Wells.  For  recent  scat- 
tered cases  of  feeble  opposition  to  vaccination  by  Protestant  ministers,  see  William 
White,  The  Great  Delusion,  London,  1885,  passim.  For  opposition  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  clergy  and  peasantry  in  Canada  to  vaccination  during  the  smallpox  plague 
of  1885,  see  the  English,  Canadian,  and  American  newspapers,  but  especially  the 
very  temperate  and  accurate  correspondence  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post  dur- 
ing September  and  October  of  that  year. 


62  FROM    MIRACLES   TO   MEDICINE. 

ague  ;  and  in  1638,  the  Countess  of  Cinchon,  Regent  of  Peru, 
having  derived  great  benefit  from  the  new  remedy,  it  was 
introduced  into  Europe.  Although  its  alkaloid,  quinine,  is 
perhaps  the  nearest  approach  to  a  medical  specific,  and  has 
diminished  the  death  rate  in  certain  regions  to  an  amazing 
extent,  its  introduction  was  bitterly  opposed  by  many  con- 
servative members  of  the  medical  profession,  and  in  this 
opposition  large  numbers  of  ultra-Protestants  joined,  out  of 
hostility  to  the  Roman  Church.  In  the  heat  of  sectarian 
feeling  the  new  remedy  was  stigmatized  as  "  an  invention  of 
the  devil  " ;  and  so  strong  was  this  opposition  that  it  was 
not  introduced  into  England  until  1653,  and  even  then  its 
use  was  long  held  back,  owing  mainly  to  anti-Catholic 
feeling. 

What  the  theological  method  on  the  ultra-Protestant 
side  could  do  to  help  the  world  at  this  very  time  is  seen  in 
the  fact  that,  while  this  struggle  was  going  on,  Hoffmann 
was  attempting  to  give  a  scientific  theory  of  the  action 
of  the  devil  in  causing  Job's  boils.  This  effort  at  a  quasi- 
scientific  explanation  which  should  satisfy  the  theological 
spirit,  comical  as  it  at  first  seems,  is  really  worthy  of  serious 
notice,  because  it  must  be  considered  as  the  beginning  of 
that  inevitable  effort  at  compromise  which  we  see  in  the 
history  of  every  science  when  it  begins  to  appear  trium- 
phant.* 

But  I  pass  to  a  typical  conflict  in  our  days,  and  in  a 
Protestant  country.  In  1847,  James  Young  Simpson,  a 
Scotch  physician,  who  afterward  rose  to  the  highest  emi- 
nence in  his  profession,  having  advocated  the  use  of  anaes- 
thetics in  obstetrical  cases,  was  immediately  met  by  a  storm 
of  opposition.  This  hostility  flowed  from  an  ancient  and 
time-honoured  belief  in  Scotland.  As  far  back  as  the  year 
1 591,  Eufame  Macalyane,  a  lady  of  rank,  being  charged  with 

*  For  the  opposition  of  the  South  American  Church  authorities  to  the  introduc- 
tion of  coca,  etc.,  see  Martindale,  Coca,  Cocaine,  and  its  Salts,  London,  1886,  p.  7. 
As  to  theological  and  sectarian  resistance  to  quinine,  see  Russell,  pp.  194,  253  ; 
also  Eccles  ;  also  Meryon,  History  of  Medicine,  London,  1861,  vol.  i,  p.  74,  note. 
For  the  great  decrease  in  deaths  by  fever  after  the  use  of  Peruvian  bark  began,  see 
statistical  tables  given  in  Russell,  p.  252  ;  and  for  Hoffmann's  attempt  at  compromise, 
ibid.,  p.  294. 


FINAL  BREAKING  AWAY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  THEORY.    63 

seeking  the  aid  of  Agnes  Sampson  for  the  relief  of  pain  at 
the  time  of  the  birth  of  her  two  sons,  was  burned  alive  on 
the  Castle  Hill  of  Edinburgh  ;  and  this  old  theological  view 
persisted  even  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
From  pulpit  after  pulpit  Simpson's  use  of  chloroform  was 
denounced  as  impious  and  contrary  to  Holy  Writ ;  texts 
were  cited  abundantly,  the  ordinary  declaration  being  that 
to  use  chloroform  was  "  to  avoid  one  part  of  the  primeval 
curse  on  woman."  Simpson  wrote  pamphlet  after  pamphlet 
to  defend  the  blessing  which  he  brought  into  use  ;  but  he 
seemed  about  to  be  overcome,  when  he  seized  a  new  weapon, 
probably  the  most  absurd  by  which  a  great  cause  was  ever 
won  :  "  My  opponents  forget,"  he  said,  "  the  twenty-first 
verse  of  the  second  chapter  of  Genesis  ;  it  is  the  record  of 
the  first  surgical  operation  ever  performed,  and  that  text 
proves  that  the  Maker  of  the  universe,  before  he  took  the 
rib  from  Adam's  side  for  the  creation  of  Eve,  caused  a  deep 
sleep  to  fall  upon  Adam."  This  was  a  stunning  blow,  but  it 
did  not  entirely  kill  the  opposition  ;  they  had  strength  left 
to  maintain  that  the  "  deep  sleep  of  Adam  took  place  before 
the  introduction  of  pain  into  the  world — in  a  state  of  inno- 
cence." But  now  a  new  champion  intervened — Thomas 
Chalmers :  with  a  few  pungent  arguments  from  his  pulpit 
he  scattered  the  enemy  forever,  and  the  greatest  battle  of 
science  against  suffering  was  won.  This  victory  was  won 
not  less  for  religion.  Wisely  did  those  who  raised  the  monu- 
ment at  Boston  to  one  of  the  discoverers  of  anaesthetics  in- 
scribe upon  its  pedestal  the  words  from  our  sacred  text, 
"  This  also  cometh  forth  from  the  Lord  of  hosts,  which  is 
wonderful  in  counsel,  and  excellent  in  working."  * 


XI.   FINAL    BREAKING   AWAY   OF    THE    THEOLOGICAL    THEORY 

IN   MEDICINE. 

While  this  development  of  history  was  going  on,  the  cen- 
tral idea  on  which  the  whole  theologic  view  rested — the  idea 

*  For  the  case  of  Eufame  Macalyane,  see  Dalyell,  Darker  Superstitions  of 
Scotland,  pp.  130,  133.  For  the  contest  of  Simpson  with  Scotch  ecclesiastical 
authorities,  see  Duns,  Life  of  Sir  J.  Y.  Simpson,  London,  1S73,  pp.  215-222,  and 
256-260. 


6^  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

of  diseases  as  resulting  from  the  wrath  of  God  or  malice  of 
Satan — was  steadily  weakened  ;  and,  out  of  the  many  things 
which  show  this,  one  may  be  selected  as  indicating  the  drift 
of  thought  among  theologians  themselves. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  most  emi- 
nent divines  of  the  American  branch  of  the  Anglican  Church 
framed  their  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Abounding  as  it  does 
in  evidences  of  their  wisdom  and  piety,  few  things  are  more 
noteworthy  than  a  change  made  in  the  exhortation  to  the  faith- 
ful to  present  themselves  at  the  communion.  While,  in  the 
old  form  laid  down  in  the  English  Prayer  Book,  the  minister 
was  required  to  warn  his  flock  not  "  to  kindle  God's  wrath  " 
or  "  provoke  him  to  plague  us  with  divers  diseases  and  sun- 
dry kinds  of  death,"  from  the  American  form  all  this  and 
more  of  similar  import  in  various  services  was  left  out. 

Since  that  day  progress  in  medical  science  has  been  rapid 
indeed,  and  at  no  period  more  so  than  during  the  last  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

The  theological  view  of  disease  has  steadily  faded,  and 
the  theological  hold  upon  medical  education  has  been  almost 
entirely  relaxed.  In  three  great  fields,  especially,  discoveries 
have  been  made  which  have  done  much  to  disperse  the 
atmosphere  of  miracle.  First,  there  has  come  knowledge 
regarding  the  relation  between  imagination  and  medicine, 
which,  though  still  defective,  is  of  great  importance.  This 
relation  has  been  noted  during  the  whole  history  of  the  sci- 
ence. When  the  soldiers  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  at  the 
siege  of  Breda  in  1625,  were  dying  of  scurvy  by  scores,  he 
sent  to  the  physicians  "  two  or  three  small  vials  filled  with  a 
decoction  of  camomile,  wormwood,  and  camphor,  gave  out 
that  it  was  a  very  rare  and  precious  medicine— a  medicine 
of  such  virtue  that  two  or  three  drops  sufficed  to  impregnate 
a  gallon  of  water,  and  that  it  had  been  obtained  from  the 
East  with  great  difficulty  and  danger."  This  statement, 
made  with  much  solemnity,  deeply  impressed  the  soldiers; 
they  took  the  medicine  eagerly,  and  great  numbers  recov- 
ered rapidly.  Again,  two  centuries  later,  young  Humphry 
Davy,  being  employed  to  apply  the  bulb  of  the  thermometer 
to  the  tongues  of  certain  patients  at  Bristol  after  they  had 
inhaled  various  gases  as  remedies  for  disease,  and  finding 


FINAL  BREAKING  AWAY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  THEORY.    65 

that  the  patients  supposed  this  application  of  the  thermom- 
eter-bulb was  the  cure,  finally  wrought  cures  by  this  appli- 
cation alone,  without  any  use  of  the  gases  whatever.  In- 
numerable cases  of  this  sort  have  thrown  a  flood  of  light 
upon  such  cures  as  those  wrought  by  Prince  Hohenlohe,  by 
the  "  metallic  tractors,"  and  by  a  multitude  of  other  agencies 
temporarily  in  vogue,  but,  above  all,  upon  the  miraculous 
cures  which  in  past  ages  have  been  so  frequent  and  of  which 
a  few  survive. 

The  second  department  is  that  of  hypnotism.  Within 
the  last  half-century  many  scattered  indications  have  been 
collected  and  supplemented  by  thoughtful,  patient  investi- 
gators of  genius,  and  especially  by  Braid  in  England  and 
Charcot  in  France.  Here,  too,  great  inroads  have  been  made 
upon  the  province  hitherto  sacred  to  miracle,  and  in  18S8 
the  cathedral  preacher,  Steigenberger,  of  Augsburg,  sounded 
an  alarm.  He  declared  his  fears  "  lest  accredited  Church 
miracles  lose  their  hold  upon  the  public,"  denounced  hyp- 
notism as  a  doctrine  of  demons,  and  ended  with  the  singular 
argument  that,  inasmuch  as  hypnotism  is  avowedly  inca- 
pable of  explaining  all  the  wonders  of  history,  it  is  idle  to 
consider  it  at  all.  But  investigations  in  hypnotism  still  go 
on,  and  may  do  much  in  the  twentieth  century  to  carry  the 
world  yet  further  from  the  realm  of  the  miraculous. 

In  a  third  field  science  has  won  a  striking  series  of  vic- 
tories. Bacteriology,  beginning  in  the  researches  of  Leeu- 
wenhoek  in  the  seventeenth  century,  continued  by  ().  F. 
Miiller  in  the  eighteenth,  and  developed  or  applied  with 
wonderful  skill  by  Ehrenberg,  Cohn,  Lister,  Pasteur,  Koch, 
Billings,  Bering,  and  their  compeers  in  the  nineteenth,  has 
explained  the  origin  and  proposed  the  prevention  or  cure  of 
various  diseases  widely  prevailing,  which  until  recently  have 
been  generally  held  to  be  "  inscrutable  providences."  Finally, 
the  closer  study  of  psychology,  especially  in  its  relations  to 
folklore,  has  revealed  processes  involved  in  the  develop- 
ment of  myths  and  legends:  the  phenomena  of  "expectant 
attention,"  the  tendency  to  marvel-mongcring,  and  the  feel- 
ing of  "  joy  in  believing." 

In  summing  up  the  history  of  this  long  struggle  between 
science  and  theology,  two  main  facts  are  to  be  noted  :  First, 
33 


66  FROM    MIRACLES   TO    MEDICINE. 

that  in  proportion  as  the  world  approached  the  "  ages  of 
faith  "  it  receded  from  ascertained  truth,  and  in  proportion 
as  the  world  has  receded  from  the  "  ages  of  faith  "  it  has 
approached  ascertained  truth  ;  secondly,  that,  in  proportion 
as  the  grasp  of  theology  upon  education  tightened,  medicine 
declined,  and  in  proportion  as  that  grasp  has  relaxed,  medi- 
cine has  been  developed. 

The  world  is  hardly  beyond  the  beginning  of  medical 
discoveries,  yet  they  have  already  taken  from  theology  what 
was  formerly  its  strongest  province — sweeping  away  from 
this  vast  field  of  human  effort  that  belief  in  miracles  which 
for  more  than  twenty  centuries  has  been  the  main  stumbling- 
block  in  the  path  of  medicine  ;  and  in  doing  this  they  have 
cleared  higher  paths  not  only  for  science,  but  for  religion.* 

*  For  the  rescue  of  medical  education  from  the  control  of  theology,  especially 
in  France,  see  Rambaud,  La  Civilisation  Contemporaine  en  France,  pp.  682,  6S3. 
For  miraculous  cures  wrought  by  imagination,  see  Tuke,  Influence  of  Mind  on 
Body,  vol.  ii.  For  the  opposition  to  scientific  study  of  hypnotism,  see  Hypnotismus 
und  Wunder :  ein  Vortrag,  ?>iit  Weiterungen,  von  Max  Steigenberger,  Donipre- 
di^er,  Augsburg,  1888,  reviewed  in  Science,  February  15,  18S9,  p.  127.  For  a 
recent  statement  regarding  the  development  of  studies  in  hypnotism,  see  Liegeois, 
De  la  Suo-o-estion  et  du  SomJiambitlisme  dans  leurs  rapports  avec  la  Jurisprudence, 
Paris,  1889,  chap.  ii.  As  to  joy  in  believing  and  exaggerating  marvels,  see  in  the 
London  Graphic  for  January  2,  1892,  an  account  of  Hindu  jugglers  by  "  Professor" 
Hofmann,  himself  an  expert  conjurer.  He  shows  that  the  Hindu  performances 
have  been  grossly  and  persistently  exaggerated  in  the  accounts  of  travellers  ;  that 
they  are  easily  seen  through,  and  greatly  inferior  to  the  jugglers'  tricks  seen  every 
day  in  European  capitals.  The  eminent  Prof.  De  Gubernatis,  who  also  had  wit- 
nessed the  Hindu  performances,  assured  the  present  writer  that  the  current  accounts 
of  them  were  monstrously  exaggerated.  As  to  the  miraculous  in  general,  the  famous 
Essay  of  Hume  holds  a  most  important  place  in  the  older  literature  of  the  subject ; 
but,  for  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  of  all  discussions  of  it,  see  Conyers  Middle- 
ton,  D.  D.,  A  Free  Inquiry  into  the  Miraculous  Powers  which  are  supposed  to  have 
subsisted  in  the  Christian  Church,  London,  1749.  For  probably  the  most  judicially 
fair  discussion,  see  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  i,  chap,  iii ;  also  his 
Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  i,  chaps,  i  and  ii ;  and  for  perhaps  the  boldest  and 
most  suggestive  of  recent  statements,  see  Max  Muller,  Physical  Religion,  being  the 
Clifford  Lectures  before  the  University  of  Glasgow  for  1S90,  London,  1891,  lecture 
xiv.  See  also,  for  very  cogent  statement,  and  arguments,  Matthew  Arnold's  Litera- 
ture and  Dogma,  especially  chap,  v,  and,  for  a  recent  utterance  of  great  clearness 
and  force,  Prof.  Osier's  Address  before  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  given  in  Sci- 
ence for  March  27,  1891. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 
FROM  FETICH   TO   HYGIENE. 

I.    THE    THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF   EPIDEMICS  AND   SANITATION. 

A  very  striking  feature  in  recorded  history  has  been  the 
recurrence  of  great  pestilences.  Various  indications  in  an- 
cient times  show  their  frequency,  while  the  famous  descrip- 
tion of  the  plague  of  Athens  given  by  Thucydides,  and  the 
discussion  of  it  by  Lucretius,  exemplify  their  severity.  In 
the  Middle  Ages  they  raged  from  time  to  time  throughout 
Europe :  such  plagues  as  the  Black  Death  and  the  sweating 
sickness  swept  off  vast  multitudes,  the  best  authorities  esti- 
mating that  of  the  former,  at  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  more  than  half  the  population  of  England  died,  and 
that  twenty-five  millions  of  people  perished  in  various  parts 
of  Europe.  In  1552  sixty-seven  thousand  patients  died  of 
the  plague  at  Paris  alone,  and  in  1580  more  than  twenty  thou- 
sand. The  great  plague  in  England  and  other  parts  of  Eu- 
rope in  the  seventeenth  century  was  also  fearful,  and  that 
which  swept  the  south  of  Europe  in  the  early  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  as  well  as  the  invasions  by  the  cholera  at 
various  times  during  the  nineteenth,  while  less  terrible  than 
those  of  former  years,  have  left  a  deep  impress  upon  the  im- 
aginations of  men. 

From  the  earliest  records  we  find  such  pestilences  at- 
tributed to  the  wrath  or  malice  of  unseen  powers.  This 
had  been  the  prevailing  view  even  in  the  most  cultured 
ages  before  the  establishment  of  Christianity  :  in  Greece  and 
Rome  especially,  plagues  of  various  sorts  were  attributed  to 
the  wrath  of  the  gods;  in  Judea,  the  scriptural  records  of 
various  plagues  sent  upon  the  earth  by  the  Divine  fiat  as  a 
punishment  for   sin  show  the  continuance  of  this  mode  of 

67 


68  FROM    FETICH    TO   HYGIENE. 

thought.  Among  many  examples  and  intimations  of  this  in 
our  sacred  literature,  we  have  the  epidemic  which  carried 
off  fourteen  thousand  seven  hundred  of  the  children  of  Is- 
rael, and  which  was  only  stayed  by  the  prayers  and  offerings 
of  Aaron,  the  high  priest ;  the  destruction  of  seventy  thou- 
sand men  in  the  pestilence  by  which  King  David  was  pun- 
ished for  the  numbering  of  Israel,  and  which  was  only  stopped 
when  the  wrath  of  Jahveh  was  averted  by  burnt-offerings  ; 
the  plague  threatened  by  the  prophet  Zechariah,  and  that 
delineated  in  the  Apocalypse.  From  these  sources  this  cur- 
rent of  ideas  was  poured  into  the  early  Christian  Church, 
and  hence  it  has  been  that  during  nearly  twenty  centuries 
since  the  rise  of  Christianity,  and  down  to  a  period  within 
living  memory,  at  the  appearance  of  any  pestilence  the 
Church  authorities,  instead  of  devising  sanitary  measures, 
have  very  generally  preached  the  necessity  of  immediate 
atonement  for  offences  against  the  Almighty. 

This  view  of  the  early  Church  was  enriched  greatly  by  a 
new  development  of  theological  thought  regarding  the  pow- 
ers of  Satan  and  evil  angels,  the  declaration  of  St.  Paul  that 
the  gods  of  antiquity  were  devils  being  cited  as  its  sufficient 
warrant.* 

Moreover,  comets,  falling  stars,  and  earthquakes  were 
thought,  upon  scriptural  authority,  to  be  "  signs  and  won- 
ders " — evidences  of  the  Divine  wrath,  heralds  of  fearful  vis- 
itations ;  and  this  belief,  acting  powerfully  upon  the  minds  of 
millions,  did  much  to  create  a  panic-terror  sure  to  increase 
epidemic  disease  wherever  it  broke  forth. 


*  For  plague  during  the  Peloponnesian  war,  see  Thucydides,  vol.  ii,  pp.  47-55, 
and  vol.  iii,  p.  87.  For  a  general  statement  regarding  this  and  other  plagues  in  an- 
cient times,  see  Lucretius,  vol.  vi,  pp.  1090  et  seq.  ;  and  for  a  translation,  see  vol.  i, 
p.  179,  in  Munro's  edition  of  1886.  For  early  views  of  sanitary  science  in  Greece 
and  Rome,  see  Forster's  Inquiry,  in  The  Pamphleteer,  vol.  xxiv,  p.  404.  For  the 
Greek  view  of  the  interference  of  the  gods  in  fdisease,  especially  in  pestilence,  see 
Grote's  History  of  Greece,  vol.  i,  pp.  251,  485,  and  vol.  vi,  p.  213  ;  see  also  Hero- 
dotus, lib.  iii,  c.  xxxiii,  and  elsewhere.  For  the  Hebrew  view  of  the  same  interfer- 
ence by  the  Almighty,  see  especially  Numbers  xi,  4-34  ;  also  xvi,  49  ;  1  Samuel 
xxiv ;  also  Psalm  cvi,  29  ;  also  the  well-known  texts  in  Zechariah  and  Revelation. 
For  St.  Paul's  declaration  that  the  gods  of  the  heathen  are  devils,  see  1  Cor.  x,  20. 
As  to  the  earlier  origin  of  the  plague  in  Egypt,  see  Yiaeser, 'Lehrbuch  der  Geschichte 
der  Medicin  und  der  epidemischen  Krankheiten,  Jena,  1875-82,  vol  iii,  pp.  15  et  seq. 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION. 


69 


The  main  cause  of  this  immense  sacrifice  of  life  is  now 
known  to  have  been  the  want  of  hygienic  precaution,  both 
in  the  Eastern  centres,  where  various  plagues  were  devel- 
oped, and  in  the  European  towns  through  which  they  spread. 
And  here  certain  theological  reasonings  came  in  to  resist  the 
evolution  of  a  proper  sanitary  theory.  Out  of  the  Orient 
had  been  poured  into  the  thinking  of  western  Europe  the 
theological  idea  that  the  abasement  of  man  adds  to  the  glory 
of  God ;  that  indignity  to  the  body  may  secure  salvation  to 
the  soul ;  hence,  that  cleanliness  betokens  pride  and  filthi- 
ness  humility.  Living  in  filth  was  regarded  by  great  num- 
bers of  holy  men,  who  set  an  example  to  the  Church  and  to 
societv,  as  an  evidence  of  sanctity.  St.  Jerome  and  the  Bre- 
viary of  the  Roman  Church  dwell  with  unction  on  the  fact 
that  St.  Hilarion  lived  his  whole  life  long  in  utter  physical 
uncleanliness ;  St.  Athanasius  glorifies  St.  Anthony  because 
he  had  never  washed  his  feet ;  St.  Abraham's  most  striking 
evidence  of  holiness  was  that  for  fifty  years  he  washed  nei- 
ther his  hands  nor  his  feet ;  St.  Sylvia  never  washed  any 
part  of  her  body  save  her  fingers ;  St.  Euphraxia  belonged 
to  a  convent  in  which  the  nuns  religiously  abstained  from 
bathing ;  St.  Mary  of  Egypt  was  eminent  for  filthiness ;  St. 
Simon  Stylites  was  in  this  respect  unspeakable — the  least 
that  can  be  said  is,  that  he  lived  in  ordure  and  stench  intol- 
erable to  his  visitors.  The  Lives  of  the  Saints  dwell  with 
complacency  on  the  statement  that,  when  sundry  Eastern 
monks  showed  a  disposition  to  wash  themselves,  the  Al- 
mighty manifested  his  displeasure  by  drying  up  a  neigh- 
bouring stream  until  the  bath  which  it  had  supplied  was 
destroyed. 

The  religious  world  was  far  indeed  from  the  inspired  ut- 
terance attributed  to  John  Wesley,  that  "  cleanliness  is  near 
akin  to  godliness."  For  century  after  century  the  idea  pre- 
vailed that  filthiness  was  akin  to  holiness  ;  and,  while  we  may 
well  believe  that  the  devotion  of  the  clergy  to  the  sick  was 
one  cause  why,  during  the  greater  plagues,  they  lost  so  large 
a  proportion  of  their  numbers,  we  can  not  escape  the  conclu- 
sion that  their  want  of  cleanliness  had  much  to  do  with  it. 
In  France,  during  the  fourteenth  century,  Guy  de  Chauliac, 
the  great  physician  of  his  time,  noted  particularly  that  cer- 


7o 


FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 


tain  Carmelite  monks  suffered  especially  from  pestilence,  and 
that  they  were  especially  filth)'.  During  the  Black  Death 
no  less  than  nine  hundred  Carthusian  monks  fell  victims  in 
one  group  of  buildings. 

Naturally,  such  an  example  set  by  the  venerated  leaders 
of  thought  exercised  great  influence  throughout  society,  and 
all  the  more  because  it  justified  the  carelessness  and  sloth  to 
which  ordinary  humanity  is  prone.  In  the  principal  towns 
of  Europe,  as  well  as  in  the  country  at  large,  down  to  a 
recent  period,  the  most  ordinary  sanitary  precautions  were 
neglected,  and  pestilences  continued  to  be  attributed  to  the 
wrath  of  God  or  the  malice  of  Satan.  As  to  the  wrath  of 
God,  a  new  and  powerful  impulse  was  given  to  this  belief  in 
the  Church  toward  the  end  of  the  sixth  century  by  St.  Greg- 
ory the  Great.  In  590,  when  he  was  elected  Pope,  the  city 
of  Rome  was  suffering  from  a  dreadful  pestilence :  the  peo- 
ple were  dying  by  thousands ;  out  of  one  procession  implor- 
ing the  mercy  of  Heaven  no  less  than  eighty  persons  died 
within  an  hour:  what  the  heathen  in  an  earlier  epoch  had 
attributed  to  Apollo  was  now  attributed  to  Jehovah,  and 
chroniclers  tell  us  that  fiery  darts  were  seen  flung  from 
heaven  into  the  devoted  city.  But  finally,  in  the  midst  of  all 
this  horror,  Gregory,  at  the  head  of  a  penitential  procession, 
saw  hovering  over  the  mausoleum  of  Hadrian  the  figure  of 
the  archangel  Michael,  who  was  just  sheathing  a  flaming 
sword,  while  three  angels  were  heard  chanting  the  Regina 
Cceli.  The  legend  continues  that  the  Pope  immediately  broke 
forth  into  hallelujahs  for  this  sign  that  the  plague  was  stayed, 
and,  as  it  shortly  afterward  became  less  severe,  a  chapel  was 
built  at  the  summit  of  the  mausoleum  and  dedicated  to  St. 
Michael ;  still  later,  above  the  whole  was  erected  the  colos- 
sal statue  of  the  archangel  sheathing  his  sword,  which  still 
stands  to  perpetuate  the  legend.  Thus  the  greatest  of 
Rome's  ancient  funeral  monuments  was  made  to  bear  testi- 
mony to  this  mediaeval  belief  ;  the  mausoleum  of  Hadrian 
became  the  castle  of  St.  Angelo.  A  legend  like  this,  claim- 
ing to  date  from  the  greatest  of  the  early  popes,  and  vouched 
for  by  such  an  imposing  monument,  had  undoubtedly  a 
marked  effect  upon  the  dominant  theology  throughout  Eu- 
rope,  which    was   constantly   developing   a  great    body   of 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION.      *l 

thought  regarding  the  agencies  by  which  the  Divine  wrath 
might  be  averted. 

First  among  these  agencies,  naturally,  were  evidences 
of  devotion,  especially  gifts  of  land,  money,  or  privileges  to 
churches,  monasteries,  and  shrines — the  seats  of  fetiches  which 
it  was  supposed  had  wrought  cures  or  might  work  them. 
The  whole  evolution  of  modern  history,  not  only  ecclesias- 
tical but  civil,  has  been  largely  affected  by  the  wealth  trans- 
ferred to  the  clergy  at  such  periods.  It  was  noted  that  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  after  the  great  plague,  the  Black 
Death,  had  passed,  an  immensely  increased  proportion  of  the 
landed  and  personal  property  of  every  European  country 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  Church.  Well  did  a  great  ecclesiastic 
remark  that  "  pestilences  are  the  harvests  of  the  ministers  of 
God."  * 

Other  modes  of  propitiating  the  higher  powers  were  pen- 
itential processions,  the  parading  of  images  of  the  Virgin  or 
of  saints  through  plague-stricken  towns,  and  fetiches  innu- 
merable. Very  noted  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centu- 
ries were  the  processions  of  the  flagellants,  trooping  through 
various  parts  of  Europe,  scourging  their  naked  bodies,  shriek- 
ing the  penitential  psalms,  and  often  running  from  wild  ex- 
cesses of  devotion  to  the  maddest  orgies. 

Sometimes,  too,  plagues  were  attributed  to  the  wrath  of 
lesser  heavenly  powers.  Just  as,  in  former  times,  the  fury  of 
"  far-darting  Apollo  "  was  felt  when   his  name  was  not  re- 

*  For  triumphant  mention  of  St.  Hilarion's  filth,  see  the  Roman  Breviary  for 
October  2ist ;  and  for  details,  see  S.  Hieronymus,  Vita  S.  Hilarionis  Eremita:,  in 
Migne,  Patrologia,  vol.  xxiii.  For  Athanasius's  reference  to  St.  Anthony's  filth,  see 
works  of  St.  Athanasius  in  The  Nicene  and  Post-Nicene  Fathers,  second  series,  vol. 
iv,  p.  209.  For  the  filthiness  of  the  other  saints  named,  see  citations  from  the 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  in  Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii,  pp.  117,  118. 
For  Guy  de  Chauliac's  observation  on  the  filthiness  of  Carmelite  monks  and  their 
great  losses  by  pestilence,  see  Meryon,  History  of  Medicine,  vol.  i,  p.  257.  For  the 
mortality  among  the  Carthusian  monks  in  time  of  plague,  see  Mrs.  Lecky's  very 
interesting  Visit  to  the  Grand  Chartreuse,  in  The  Nineteenth  Century  for  March, 
1891.  For  the  plague  at  Rome  in  590,  the  legend  regarding  the  fiery  darts,  men- 
tioned by  Pope  Gregory  himself,  and  that  of  the  castle  of  St.  Angel o,  >«•  ( Ii 
vius,  Geschichte  der  Stadt  Rom  itn  Mittelalter,  vol.  ii,  pp.  26-35  ;  also  Story,  Castle 
of  St.  Angelo,  etc.,  chap.  ii.  For  the  remark  that  "  pestilences  are  the  harvest  of 
the  ministers  of  God,"  see  reference  to  Charlevoix,  in  Southey,  History  of  Brazil, 
vol.  ii,  p.  254,  cited  in  Buckle,  vol.  i,  p.  130,  note. 


72 


FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 


spectfully  treated  by  mortals,  so,  in  1680,  the  Church  authori- 
ties at  Rome  discovered  that  the  plague  then  raging  resulted 
from  the  anger  of  St.  Sebastian  because  no  monument  had 
been  erected  to  him.  Such  a  monument  was  therefore  placed 
in  the  Church  of  St.  Peter  ad  Vincula,  and  the  plague  ceased. 

So  much  for  the  endeavour  to  avert  the  wrath  of  the 
heavenly  powers.  On  the  other  hand,  theological  reasoning 
no  less  subtle  was  used  in  thwarting  the  malice  of  Satan. 
This  idea,  too,  came  from  far.  In  the  sacred  books  of  India 
and  Persia,  as  well  as  in  our  own,  we  find  the  same  theory 
of  disease,  leading  to  similar  means  of  cure.  Perhaps  the 
most  astounding  among  Christian  survivals  of  this  theory 
and  its  resultant  practices  was  seen  during  the  plague  at 
Rome  in  1522.  In  that  year,  at  that  centre  of  divine  illumi- 
nation, certain  people,  having  reasoned  upon  the  matter, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  this  great  scourge  was  the  result 
of  Satanic  malice  ;  and,  in  view  of  St.  Paul's  declaration  that 
the  ancient  gods  were  devils,  and  of  the  theory  that  the  an- 
cient gods  of  Rome  were  the  devils  who  had  the  most  reason 
to  punish  that  city  for  their  dethronement,  and  that  the  great 
amphitheatre  was  the  chosen  haunt  of  these  demon  gods,  an 
ox  decorated  with  garlands,  after  the  ancient  heathen  man- 
ner, was  taken  in  procession  to  the  Colosseum  and  solemnly 
sacrificed.  Even  this  proved  vain,  and  the  Church  authori- 
ties then  ordered  expiatory  processions  and  ceremonies  to 
propitiate  the  Almighty,  the  Virgin,  and  the  saints,  who 
had  been  offended  by  this  temporary  effort  to  bribe  their 
enemies. 

But  this  sort  of  theological  reasoning  developed  an  idea 
far  more  disastrous,  and  this  was  that  Satan,  in  causing 
pestilences,  used  as  his  emissaries  especially  Jews  and 
witches.  The  proof  of  this  belief  in  the  case  of  the  Jews 
was  seen  in  the  fact  that  they  escaped  with  a  less  percentage 
of  disease  than  did  the  Christians  in  the  great  plague  periods. 
This  was  doubtless  due  in  some  measure  to  their  remarkable 
sanitary  system,  which  had  probably  originated  thousands  of 
years  before  in  Egypt,  and  had  been  handed  down  through 
Jewish  lawgivers  and  statesmen.  Certainly  they  observed 
more  careful  sanitary  rules  and  more  constant  abstinence 
from  dangerous  foods  than  was  usual  among  Christians;  but 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION.      73 

the  public  at  large  could  not  understand  so  simple  a  cause, 
and  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  their  immunity  resulted 
from  protection  by  Satan,  and  that  this  protection  was  repaid 
and  the  pestilence  caused  by  their  wholesale  poisoning  of 
Christians.  As  a  result  of  this  mode  of  thought,  attempts 
were  made  in  all  parts  of  Europe  to  propitiate  the  Almighty, 
to  thwart  Satan,  and  to  stop  the  plague  by  torturing  and 
murdering  the  Jews.  Throughout  Europe  during  great  pes- 
tilences we  hear  of  extensive  burnings  of  this  devoted  people. 
In  Bavaria,  at  the  time  of  the  Black  Death,  it  is  computed 
that  twelve  thousand  Jews  thus  perished  ;  in  the  small  town 
of  Erfurt  the  number  is  said  to  have  been  three  thousand  ; 
in  Strasburg,  the  Rue  Brulee  remains  as  a  monument  to  the 
two  thousand  Jews  burned  there  for  poisoning  the  wells  and 
causing  the  plague  of  1348;  at  the  royal  castle  of  Chinon, 
near  Tours,  an  immense  trench  was  dug,  filled  with  blazing 
wood,  and  in  a  single  day  one  hundred  and  sixty  Jews  were 
burned.  Everywhere  in  continental  Europe  this  mad  perse- 
cution went  on  ;  but  it  is  a  pleasure  to  say  that  one  great 
churchman,  Pope  Clement  VI,  stood  against  this  popular 
unreason,  and,  so  far  as  he  could  bring  his  influence  to  bear 
on  the  maddened  populace,  exercised  it  in  favour  of  mercy 
to  these  supposed  enemies  of  the  Almighty.* 

*  For  an  early  conception  in  India  of  the  Divinity  acting  through  medicine,  see 
The  Bhagavadgitd,  translated  by  Telang,  p.  82,  in  Max  Muller's  Sacred  Books  of 
the  East.  For  the  necessity  of  religious  means  of  securing  knowledge  of  medicine, 
see  the  Anugita,  translated  by  Telang,  in  Max  Muller's  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
p.  388.  For  ancient  Persian  ideas  of  sickness  as  sent  by  the  spirit  of  evil  and  to  be 
cured  by  spells,  but  not  excluding  medicine  and  surgery,  and  for  sickness  generally 
as  caused  by  the  evil  principle  in  demons,  see  the  Zend-Avesta,  Darmesteter's  trans- 
lation, introduction  passim,  but  especially  p.  xciii.  For  diseases  wrought  by  witch- 
craft, see  the  same,  pp.  230,  293.  On  the  preference  of  spells  in  healing  over 
medicine  and  surgery,  see  Zend-Avesta,  vol.  i,  pp.  85,  86.  For  healing  by  magic  in 
ancient  Greece,  see,  e.  g.,  the  cure  of  Ulysses  in  the  Odyssey,  "  They  stopped  the 
black  blood  by  a  spell"  (Odyssey,  xix,  457).  For  medicine  in  Egypt  as  partly 
priestly  and  partly  in  the  hands  of  physicians,  see  Rawlinson's  Herodotus,  vol.  ii,  p. 
136,  note.  For  ideas  of  curing  of  diseases  by  expulsion  of  demons  still  surviving 
among  various  tribes  and  nations  of  Asia,  see  J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bough  :  a 
Study  of  Comparative  Religion,  London,  1890,  pp.  1S4-192.  For  the  Flagellants 
and  their  processions  at  the  time  of  the  Black  Death,  see  Lea,  History  of  the  Inqui- 
sition, New  Vork,  1888,  vol.  ii,  pp.  381  et  sea.  For  the  persecution  of  the  Jews  in 
time  of  pestilence,  see  ibid.,  p.  379  and  following,  with  authorities  in  the  notes. 
For  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews  from  Padua,  see  the  Acta  Sanctorum,  September, 
torn,  vii,  p.  893. 


74 


FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 


Yet,  as  late  as  1527,  the  people  of  Pavia,  being  threatened 
with  plague,  appealed  to  St.  Bernardino  of  Feltro,  who  dur- 
ing his  life  had  been  a  fierce  enemy  of  the  Jews,  and  they 
passed  a  decree  promising  that  if  the  saint^would  avert  the 
pestilence  they  would  expel  the  Jews  from  the  city.  The 
saint  apparently  accepted  the  bargain,  and  in  due  time  the 
Jews  were  expelled. 

As  to  witches,  the  reasons  for  believing  them  the  cause 
of  pestilence  also  came  from  far.  This  belief,  too,  had  been 
poured  mainly  from  Oriental  sources  into  our  sacred  books 
and  thence  into  the  early  Church,  and  was  strengthened  by 
a  whole  line  of  Church  authorities,  fathers,  doctors,  and 
saints ;  but,  above  all,  by  the  great  bull,  Summis  Desidc- 
rantes,  issued  by  Pope  Innocent  VIII,  in  1484.  This  utter- 
ance from  the  seat  of  St.  Peter  infallibly  committed  the 
Church  to  the  idea  that  witches  are  a  great  cause  of  disease, 
storms,  and  various  ills  which  afflict  humanity ;  and  the 
Scripture  on  which  the  action  recommended  against  witches 
in  this  papal  bull,  as  well  as  in  so  many  sermons  and  treatises 
for  centuries  afterward,  was  based,  was  the  famous  text, 
"  Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live."  This  idea  persisted 
long,  and  the  evolution  of  it  is  among  the  most  fearful  things 
in  human  history.* 

*  On  the  plagues  generally,  see  Hecker,  Epidemics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  passim  ; 
but  especially  Haeser,  as  above,  III.  Band,  pp.  1-202  ;  also  Sprengel,  Baas,  Isensee, 
et  al.  For  brief  statement  showing  the  enormous  loss  of  life  in  these  plagues,  see 
Littre,  M/decine  et  Medecins,  Paris,  1875,  pp.  3  et  sea.  For  a  summary  of  the  effects 
of  the  black  plague  throughout  England,  see  Green's  Short  History  of  the  English 
People,  chap.  v.  For  the  mortality  in  the  Paris  hospitals,  see  Desmazes,  Supplices, 
Prisons  et  Graces  en  France,  Paris,  1866.  For  striking  descriptions  of  plague- 
stricken  cities,  see  the  well-known  passages  in  Thucydides,  Boccaccio,  De  Foe,  and, 
above  all,  Manzoni's  Promessi  Sposi.  For  examples  of  averting  the  plagues  by  pro. 
cessions,  see  Leopold  Delisle,  Etudes  sur  la  Condition  de  la  Classe  Agricole,  etc.,  en 
Normandie  au  Moyen  Age,  p.  630  ;  also  Fort,  chap,  xxiii.  For  the  anger  of  St. 
Sebastian  as  a  cause  of  the  plague  at  Rome,  and  its  cessation  when  a  monument 
had  been  erected  to  him,  see  Paulus  Diaconus,  cited  in  Gregorovius,  vol.  ii,  p.  165. 
For  the  sacrifice  of  an  ox  in  the  Colosseum  to  the  ancient  gods  as  a  means  of  avert- 
ing the  plague  of  1522,  at  Rome,  see  Gregorovius,  vol.  viii,  p.  390.  As  to  massa- 
cres of  the  Jews  in  order  to  avert  the  wrath  of  God  in  pestilence,  see  L'Ecole  et 
la  Science,  Paris,  1887,  p.  178;  also  Hecker,  and  especially  Hoeniger,  Gang  tmd 
Verbreitung  des  Sclnvarzen  Todes  in  Deutschland,  Berlin,  1880.  For  a  long  list  of 
towns  in  which  burnings  of  Jews  took  place  for  this  imaginary  cause,  see  pp.  7-1 1. 
As  to  absolute  want  of  sanitary  precautions,  see  Hecker,  p.  292.     As  to  condemna- 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION.      75 

In  Germany  its  development  was  especially  terrible. 
From  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth,  Catholic  and  Protestant  theologians  and 
ecclesiastics  vied  with  each  other  in  detecting  witches  guilty 
of  producing  sickness  or  bad  weather;  women  were  sent  to 
torture  and  death  by  thousands,  and  with  them,  from  time 
to  time,  men  and  children.  On  the  Catholic  side  sufficient 
warrant  for  this  work  was  found  in  the  bull  of  Pope  Inno- 
cent VIII,  and  the  bishops'  palaces  of  south  Germany  be- 
came shambles, — the  lordly  prelates  of  Salzburg,  Wiirzburg, 
and  Bamberg  taking  the  lead  in  this  butchery. 

In  north  Germany  Protestantism  was  just  as  conscien- 
tiously cruel.  It  based  its  theory  and  practice  toward 
witches  directly  upon  the  Bible,  and  above  all  on  the  great 
text  which  has  cost  the  lives  of  so  many  myriads  of  innocent 
men,  women,  and  children,  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch 
to  live."  Naturally  the  Protestant  authorities  strove  to  show 
that  Protestantism  was  no  less  orthodox  in  this  respect  than 
Catholicism  ;  and  such  theological  jurists  as  Carpzov,  Dam- 
houder,  and  Calov  did  their  work  thoroughly.  An  eminent 
authority  on  this  subject  estimates  the  number  of  victims 
thus  sacrificed  during  that  century  in  Germany  alone  at  over 
a  hundred  thousand. 

Among  the  methods  of  this  witch  activity  especially  cred- 
ited in  central  and  southern  Europe  was  the  anointing  of 
city  walls  and  pavements  with  a  diabolical  unguent  causing 
pestilence.  In  1530  Michael  Caddo  was  executed  with  fear- 
ful tortures  for  thus  besmearing  the  pavements  of  Geneva. 
But  far  more  dreadful  was  the  torturing  to  death  of  a  large 
body  of  people  at  Milan,  in  the  following  century,  for  pro- 

tion  by  strong  religionists  of  medical  means  in  the  plague,  see  Fort,  p.  130.  For  a 
detailed  account  of  the  action  of  Popes  Eugene  IV,  Innocent  VIII,  and  other  popes, 
against  witchcraft,  ascribing  to  it  storms  and  diseases,  and  for  the  bull  Summis  Dc- 
siderantes,  see  the  chapters  on  Meteorology  and  Magic  in  this  series.  The  text  of 
the  bull  is  given  in  the  Malleus  Malejicarum,  in  Binsfeld,  and  in  Roskoff,  Geschichte 
des  Teu/els,  Leipzig,  1869,  vol.  i,  pp.  222-225,  and  a  good  summary  and  analysis  of 
it  in  Soldan,  Geschichte  der  Hexenprocesse.  For  a  concise  and  admirable  statement 
of  the  contents  and  effects  of  the  bull,  see  Lea,  History  of  the  Inquisition,  vol.  iii, 
pp.  40  et  set/.  ;  and  for  the  best  statement  known  to  me  of  t lie  general  subject,  Prof. 
George  L.  Burr's  paper  on  The  Literature  of  Witchcraft,  read  before  the  American 
Historical  Association  at  Washington,  1890. 


76  FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 

during  the  plague  by  anointing  the  walls;  and  a  little  later 
similar  punishments  for  the  same  crime  were  administered 
in  Toulouse  and  other  cities.  The  case  in  Milan  may  be 
briefly  summarized  as  showing  the  ideas  on  sanitary  science 
of  all  classes,  from  highest  to  lowest,  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  That  city  was  then  under  the  control  of  Spain ; 
and,  its  authorities  having  received  notice  from  the  Span- 
ish Government  that  certain  persons  suspected  of  witch- 
craft had  recently  left  Madrid,  and  had  perhaps  gone  to 
Milan  to  anoint  the  walls,  this  communication  was  dwelt 
upon  in  the  pulpits  as  another  evidence  of  that  Satanic  malice 
which  the  Church  alone  had  the  means  of  resisting,  and  the 
people  were  thus  excited  and  put  upon  the  alert.  One  morn- 
ing, in  the  year  1630,  an  old  woman,  looking  out  of  her  win- 
dow, saw  a  man  walking  along  the  street  and  wiping  his 
fingers  upon  the  walls ;  she  immediately  called  the  attention 
of  another  old  woman,  and  they  agreed  that  this  man  must 
be  one  of  the  diabolical  anointers.  It  was  perfectly  evident 
to  a  person  under  ordinary  conditions  that  this  unfortunate 
man  was  simply  trying  to  remove  from  his  fingers  the  ink 
gathered  while  writing  from  the  ink-horn  which  he  carried 
in  his  girdle ;  but  this  explanation  was  too  simple  to  satisfy 
those  who  first  observed  him  or  those  who  afterward  tried 
him  :  a  mob  was  raised  and  he  was  thrown  into  prison.  Be- 
ing tortured,  he  at  first  did  not  know  what  to  confess ;  but, 
on  inquiring  from  the  jailer  and  others,  he  learned  what  the 
charge  was,  and,  on  being  again  subjected  to  torture  utterly 
beyond  endurance,  he  confessed  everything  which  was  sug- 
gested to  him  ;  and,  on  being  tortured  again  and  again  to 
give  the  names  of  his  accomplices,  he  accused,  at  hazard,  the 
first  people  in  the  city  whom  he  thought  of.  These,  being 
arrested  and  tortured  beyond  endurance,  confessed  and  im- 
plicated a  still  greater  number,  until  members  of  the  fore- 
most families  were  included  in  the  charge.  Again  and  again 
all  these  unfortunates  were  tortured  beyond  endurance. 
Under  paganism,  the  rule  regarding  torture  had  been  that  it 
should  not  be  carried  beyond  human  endurance  ;  and  we 
therefore  find  Cicero  ridiculing  it  as  a  means  of  detecting 
crime,  because  a  stalwart  criminal  of  strong  nerves  might 
resist  it  and  go  free,  while  a  physically  delicate  man,  though 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION. 


77 


innocent,  would  be  forced  to  confess.  Hence  it  was  that 
under  paganism  a  limit  was  imposed  to  the  torture  which 
could  be  administered ;  but,  when  Christianity  had  become 
predominant  throughout  Europe,  torture  was  developed  with 
a  cruelty  never  before  known.  There  had  been  evolved  a 
doctrine  of  "  excepted  cases  " — these  "  excepted  cases  "  being 
especially  heresy  and  witchcraft ;  for  by  a  very  simple  and 
logical  process  of  theological  reasoning  it  was  held  that 
Satan  would  give  supernatural  strength  to  his  special  devo- 
tees— that  is,  to  heretics  and  witches — and  therefore  that,  in 
dealing  with  them,  there  should  be  no  limit  to  the  torture. 
The  result  was  in  this  particular  case,  as  in  tens  of  thousands 
besides,  that  the  accused  confessed  everything  which  could 
be  suggested  to  them,  and  often  in  the  delirium  of  their 
agony  confessed  far  more  than  all  that  the  zeal  of  the  prose- 
cutors could  suggest.  Finally,  a  great  number  of  worthy 
people  were  sentenced  to  the  most  cruel  death  which  could 
be  invented.  The  records  of  their  trials  and  deaths  are 
frightful.  The  treatise  which  in  recent  years  has  first 
brought  to  light  in  connected  form  an  authentic  account  of 
the  proceedings  in  this  affair,  and  which  gives  at  the  end  en- 
gravings of  the  accused  subjected  to  horrible  tortures  on 
their  way  to  the  stake  and  at  the  place  of  execution  itself,  is 
one  of  the  most  fearful  monuments  of  theological  reasoning 
and  human  folly. 

To  cap  the  climax,  after  a  poor  apothecary  had  been  tor- 
tured into  a  confession  that  he  had  made  the  magic  oint- 
ment, and  when  he  had  been  put  to  death  with  the  most 
exquisite  refinements  of  torture,  his  family  were  obliged  to 
take  another  name,  and  were  driven  out  from  the  city  ;  his 
house  was  torn  down,  and  on  its  site  was  erected  "  The  Col- 
umn of  Infamy,"  which  remained  on  this  spot  until,  toward 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  party  of  young  radi- 
cals, probably  influenced  by  the  reading  of  Beccaria,  sallied 
forth  one  night  and  leveled  this  pious  monument  to  the 
ground. 

Herein  was  seen  the  culmination  and  decline  of  the  bull 
Summis  Desiderantes.  It  had  been  issued  by  him  whom  a 
majority  of  the  Christian  world  believes  to  be  infallible 
in  his  teachings  to  the  Church  as  regards  faith  and  morals; 


-8  FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 

yet  here  was  a  deliberate  utterance  in  a  matter  of  faith  and 
morals  which  even  children  now  know  to  be  utterly  untrue. 
Though  Beccaria's  book  on  Crimes  and  Punishments,  with  its 
declarations  against  torture,  was  placed  by  the  Church  au- 
thorities upon  the  Index,  and  though  the  faithful  throughout 
the  Christian  world  were  forbidden  to  read  it,  even  this 
could  not  prevent  the  victory  of  truth  over  this  infallible 
utterance  of  Innocent  VIII.* 

As  the  seventeenth  century  went  on,  ingenuity  in  all 
parts  of  Europe  seemed  devoted  to  new  developments  of 
fetichism.  A  very  curious  monument  of  this  evolution  in 
Italy  exists  in  the  Royal  Gallery  of  Paintings  at  Naples, 
where  may  be  seen  several  pictures  representing  the  meas- 
ures taken  to  save  the  city  from  the  plague  during  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  but  especially  from  the  plague  of  1656. 
One  e  lormous  canvas  gives  a  curious  example  of  the  theo- 
logical doctrine  of  intercession  between  man  and  his  Maker, 
spun  out  to  its  logical  length.  In  the  background  is  the 
plague-stricken  city :  in  the  foreground  the  people  are  pray- 
ing to  the  city  authorities  to  avert  the  plague ;  the  city  au- 
thorities are  praying  to  the  Carthusian  monks ;  the  monks 
are  praying  to  St.  Martin,  St.  Bruno,  and  St.  Januarius ; 
these  three  saints  in  their  turn  are  praying  to  the  Virgin  ; 
the  Virgin  prays  to  Christ ;  and  Christ  prays  to  the  Almighty. 
Still  another  picture  represents  the  people,  led  by  the  priests, 
executing  with  horrible  tortures  the  Jews,  heretics,  and 
witches  who  were  supposed  to  cause  the  pestilence  of  1656, 
while  in  the  heavens  the  Virgin  and  St.  Januarius  are  inter- 

*  As  to  the  fearful  effects  of  the  papal  bull  Summis  Desiderantes  in  south  Ger- 
many, as  to  the  Protestant  severities  in  north  Germany,  as  to  the  immense  number 
of  women  and  children  put  to  death  for  witchcraft  in  Germany  generally  for  spread- 
ing storms  and  pestilence,  and  as  to  the  monstrous  doctrine  of  "  excepted  cases," 
see  the  standard  authorities  on  witchcraft,  especially  Wachter,  Beitrage  zur  Ge- 
schichte  des  Strafrechts,  Soldan,  Horst,  Hauber,  and  Langin  ;  also  Burr,  as  above. 
In  another  series  of  chapters  on  The  Warfare  of  Humanity  withTheology,  I  hope 
to  go  more  fully  into  the  subject.  For  the  magic  spreading  of  the  plague  at 
Milan,  see  Manzoni,  /  Promessi  Sposi  and  La  Colonna  Infame  ;  and  for  the  origin 
of  the  charges,  with  all  the  details  of  the  trial,  see  the  Processo  Originate  degli  Un- 
tori,  Milan,  1839,  passim,  but  especially  the  large  folding  plate  at  the  end,  exhib- 
iting the  tortures.  For  the  after-history  of  the  Column  of  Infamy,  and  for  the 
placing  of  Beccaria's  book  on  the  Index,  see  Cantu,  Vita  di  Beccaria.  For  the 
magic  spreading  of  the  plague  in  general,  see  Littre,  pp.  492  and  following. 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION.      70 

ceding    with    Christ   to   sheathe    his   sword    and    stop    the 
plague. 

In  such  an  atmosphere  of  thought  it  is  no  wonder  that 
the  death  statistics  were  appalling.  We  hear  of  districts  in 
which  not  more  than  one  in  ten  escaped,  and  some  were  en- 
tirely depopulated.  Such  appeals  to  fetich  against  pestilence 
have  continued  in  Naples  down  to  our  own  time,  the  great 
saving  power  being  the  liquefaction  of  the  blood  of  St.  Jan- 
uarius.  In  1856  the  present  writer  saw  this  miracle  per- 
formed in  the  gorgeous  chapel  of  the  saint  forming  part  of 
the  Cathedral  of  Naples.  The  chapel  was  filled  with  de- 
vout worshippers  of  every  class,  from  the  officials  in  court 
dress,  representing  the  Bourbon  king,  down  to  the  lowest 
lazzaroni.  The  reliquary  of  silver-gilt,  shaped  like  a  large 
human  head,  and  supposed  to  contain  the  skull  of  the  saint, 
was  first  placed  upon  the  altar  ;  next,  two  vials  containing  a 
dark  substance  said  to  be  his  blood,  having  been  taken  from 
the  wall,  were  also  placed  upon  the  altar  near  the  head.  As 
the  priests  said  masses,  they  turned  the  vials  from  time  to 
time,  and  the  liquefaction  being  somewhat  delayed,  the  great 
crowd  of  people  burst  out  into  more  and  more  impassioned 
expostulation  and  petitions  to  the  saint.  Just  in  front  of  the 
altar  were  the  lazzaroni  who  claimed  to  be  descendants  of  the 
saint's  family,  and  these  were  especially  importunate  :  at  such 
times  they  beg,  they  scold,  they  even  threaten  ;  they  have 
been  known  to  abuse  the  saint  roundly,  and  to  tell  him  that, 
if  he  did  not  care  to  show  his  favour  to  the  city  by  liquefying 
his  blood,  St.  Cosmo  and  St.  Damian  were  just  as  good  saints 
as  he,  and  would  no  doubt  be  very  glad  to  have  the  city  de- 
vote itself  to  them.  At  last,  on  the  occasion  above  referred 
to,  the  priest,  turning  the  vials  suddenly,  announced  that 
the  saint  had  performed  the  miracle,  and  instantly  priests, 
people,  choir,  and  organ  burst  forth  into  a  great  Te  Dcum ; 
bells  rang,  and  cannon  roared  ;  a  procession  was  formed, 
and  the  shrine  containing  the  saint's  relics  was  carried 
through  the  streets,  the  people  prostrating  themselves  on 
both  sides  of  the  way  and  throwing  showers  of  rose  leaves 
upon  the  shrine  and  upon  the  path  before  it.  The  contents 
of  these  precious  vials  are  an  interesting  relic  indeed,  for 
they  represent   to    us  vividly  that  period   when  men   who 


So  FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 

were  willing  to  go  to  the  stake  for  their  religious  opin- 
ions thought  it  not  wrong  to  save  the  souls  of  their  fellow- 
men  by  pious  mendacity  and  consecrated  fraud.  To  the 
scientific  eye  this  miracle  is  very  simple :  the  vials  contain, 
no  doubt,  one  of  those  mixtures  fusing  at  low  temperature, 
which,  while  kept  in  its  place  within  the  cold  stone  walls  of 
the  church,  remains  solid,  but  upon  being  brought  out  into 
the  hot,  crowded  chapel,  and  fondled  by  the  warm  hands  of 
the  priests,  gradually  softens  and  becomes  liquid.  It  was 
curious  to  note,  at  the  time  above  mentioned,  that  even  the 
high  functionaries  representing  the  king  looked  at  the  mira- 
cle with  awe :  they  evidently  found  "  joy  in  believing,"  and 
one  of  them  assured  the  present  writer  that  the  only  thing 
which  could  cause  it  was  the  direct  exercise  of  miraculous 
power. 

It  may  be  reassuring  to  persons  contemplating  a  visit  to 
that  beautiful  capital  in  these  days,  that,  while  this  miracle 
still  goes  on,  it  is  no  longer  the  only  thing  relied  upon  to 
preserve  the  public  health.  An  unbelieving  generation,  espe- 
cially taught  by  the  recent  horrors  of  the  cholera,  has  thought 
it  wise  to  supplement  the  power  of  St.  Januarius  by  the  "  Ri- 
sanamento,"  begun  mainly  in  1885  and  still  going  on.  The 
drainage  of  the  city  has  thus  been  greatly  improved,  the  old 
wells  closed,  and  pure  water  introduced  from  the  mountains. 
Moreover,  at  the  last  outburst  of  cholera  a  few  years  since, 
a  noble  deed  was  done  which  by  its  moral  effect  exercised 
a  widespread  healing  power.  Upon  hearing  of  this  terrific 
outbreak  of  pestilence,  King  Humbert,  though  under  the 
ban  of  the  Church,  broke  from  all  the  entreaties  of  his 
friends  and  family,  went  directly  into  the  plague-stricken 
city,  and  there,  in  the  streets,  public  places,  and  hospitals, 
encouraged  the  living,  comforted  the  sick  and  dying,  and 
took  means  to  prevent  a  further  spread  of  the  pestilence. 
To  the  credit  of  the  Church  it  should  also  be  said  that  the 
Cardinal  Archbishop  San  Felice  joined  him  in  this. 

Miracle  for  miracle,  the  effect  of  this  visit  of  the  king 
seems  to  have  surpassed  anything  that  St.  Januarius  could 
do,  for  it  gave  confidence  and  courage  which  very  soon 
showed  their  effects  in  diminishing  the  number  of  deaths. 
It  would  certainly  appear  that  in  this  matter  the  king  was 


THEOLOGICAL  VIEW  OF  EPIDEMICS  AND  SANITATION.      8  I 

more  directly  under  Divine  inspiration  and  guidance  than 
was  the  Pope  ;  for  the  fact  that  King-  Humbert  went  to  Na- 
ples at  the  risk  of  his  life,  while  Leo  XIII  remained  in  safety 
at  the  Vatican,  impressed  the  Italian  people  in  favour  of  the 
new  regime  and  against  the  old  as  nothing  else  could  have 
done. 

In  other  parts  of  Italy  the  same  progress  is  seen  under 
the  new  Italian  government.  Venice,  Genoa,  Leghorn,  and 
especially  Rome,  which  under  the  sway  of  the  popes  was 
scandalously  filthy,  are  now  among  the  cleanest  cities  in  Eu- 
rope. What  the  relics  of  St.  Januarius,  St.  Anthony,  and  a 
multitude  of  local  fetiches  throughout  Italy  were  for  ages 
utterly  unable  to  do,  has  been  accomplished  by  the  develop- 
ment of  the  simplest  sanitary  principles. 

Spain  shows  much  the  same  characteristics  of  a  country 
where  theological  considerations  have  been  all-controlling  for 
centuries.  Down  to  the  interference  of  Napoleon  with  that 
kingdom,  all  sanitary  efforts  were  looked  upon  as  absurd  if  not 
impious.  The  most  sober  accounts  of  travellers  in  the  Span- 
ish Peninsula  until  a  recent  period  are  sometimes  irresistibly 
comic  in  their  pictures  of  peoples  insisting  on  maintaining 
arrangements  more  filthy  than  any  which  would  be  permit- 
ted in  an  American  backwoods  camp,  while  taking  enormous 
pains  to  stop  pestilence  by  bell-ringings,  processions,  and 
new  dresses  bestowed  upon  the  local  Madonnas;  yet  here, 
too,  a  healthful  scepticism  has  begun  to  work  for  good.  The 
outbreaks  of  cholera  in  recent  years  have  done  some  little 
to  bring  in  better  sanitary  measures.* 

*  As  to  recourse  to  fetichism  in  Italy  in  time  of  plague,  and  the  pictures  show- 
ing the  intercession  of  Januarius  and  other  saints,  I  have  relied  on  my  own  notes 
made  at  various  visits  to  Naples.  For  the  general  subject,  see  Peter,  Etudes  Xa- 
politaines,  especially  chapters  v  and  vi.  For  detailed  accounts  of  the  liquefaction 
of  St.  Januarius's  blood  by  eye-witnesses,  one  an  eminent  Catholic  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  the  other  a  distinguished  Protestant  of  our  own  time,  see  Mur- 
ray's Handbook  for  South  Italy  and  jVapks,  description  of  the  Cathedral  of  San 
Gennaro.  For  an  interesting  series  of  articles  on  the  subject,  see  The  Catholic 
I Vorld  for  September,  October,  and  November,  1871.  For  the  incredible  filthi- 
ness  of  the  great  cities  of  Spain,  and  the  resistance  of  the  people,  down  to  a  recent 
period,  to  the  most  ordinary  regulations  prompted  by  decency,  see  Eascome,  His- 
tory of  Epidemic  Pestilences,  especially  pp.  119,  120.  See  also  the  Autobiography 
of  D'Ewes,  London,  1845,  vol.  ii,  p.  446;  also,  for  various  citations,  the  second 
volume  of  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization  in  England. 
34 


82  FROM    FETICH   TO    HYGIENE. 


II.   GRADUAL   DECAY   OF   THEOLOGICAL   VIEWS   REGARDING 

SANITATION. 

We  have  seen  how  powerful  in  various  nations  especially 
obedient  to  theology  were  the  forces  working  in  opposition 
to  the  evolution  of  hygiene,  and  we  shall  find  this  same  op- 
position, less  effective,  it  is  true,  but  still  acting  with  great 
power,  in  countries  which  had  become  somewhat  emanci- 
pated from  theological  control.  In  England,  during  the 
mediaeval  period,  persecutions  of  Jews  were  occasionally  re- 
sorted to,  and  here  and  there  we  hear  of  persecutions  of 
witches ;  but,  as  torture  was  rarely  used  in  England,  there 
were,  from  those  charged  with  producing  plague,  few  of  those 
torture-born  confessions  which  in  other  countries  grave  rise 
to  widespread  cruelties.  Down  to  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  the  filthiness  in  the  ordinary  mode  of  life  in 
England  was  such  as  we  can  now  hardly  conceive :  ferment- 
ing organic  material  was  allowed  to  accumulate  and  become 
a  part  of  the  earthen  floors  of  rural  dwellings;  and  this  un- 
doubtedly developed  the  germs  of  many  diseases.  In  his 
noted  letter  to  the  physician  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  Erasmus 
describes  the  filth  thus  incorporated  into  the  floors  of  Eng- 
lish houses,  and,  what  is  of  far  more  importance,  he  shows 
an  inkling  of  the  true  cause  of  the  wasting  diseases  of  the 
period.  He  says,  "  If  I  entered  into  a  chamber  which  had 
been  uninhabited  for  months,  I  was  immediately  seized  with 
a  fever."  He  ascribed  the  fearful  plague  of  the  sweating 
sickness  to  this  cause.  So,  too,  the  noted  Dr.  Caius  advised 
sanitary  precautions  against  the  plague,  and  in  after-genera- 
tions, Mead,  Pringle,  and  others  urged  them  ;  but  the  pre- 
vailing thought  was  too  strong,  and  little  was  done.  Even 
the  floor  of  the  presence  chamber  of  Queen  Elizabeth  in 
Greenwich  Palace  was  "  covered  with  hay,  after  the  English 
fashion,"  as  one  of  the  chroniclers  tells  us. 

In  the  seventeenth  century,  aid  in  these  great  scourges 
was  mainly  sought  in  special  church  services.  The  foremost 
English  churchmen  during  that  century  being  greatly  given 
to  study  of  the  early  fathers  of  the  Church ;  the  theological 
theory  of  disease,  so  dear  to  the  fathers,  still  held  sway,  and 


GRADUAL   DECAY   OF   THEOLOGICAL   VIEWS. 


§3 


this  was  the  case  when  the  various  visitations  reached  their 
climax  in  the  great  plague  of  London  in  1665,  which  swept 
off  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  people  from  that  city. 
The  attempts  at  meeting  it  by  sanitary  measures  were  few 
and  poor ;  the  medical  system  of  the  time  was  still  largely 
tinctured  by  superstitions  resulting  from  mediaeval  modes  of 
thought ;  hence  that  plague  was  generally  attributed  to  the 
Divine  wrath  caused  by  "  the  prophaning  of  the  Sabbath." 
Texts  from  Numbers,  the  Psalms,  Zechariah,  and  the  Apoc- 
alypse were  dwelt  upon  in  the  pulpits  to  show  that  plagues 
are  sent  by  the  Almighty  to  punish  sin  ;  and  perhaps  the 
most  ghastly  figure  among  all  those  fearful  scenes  described 
by  De  Foe  is  that  of  the  naked  fanatic  walking  up  and  down 
the  streets  with  a  pan  of  fiery  coals  upon  his  head,  and,  after 
the  manner  of  Jonah  at  Nineveh,  proclaiming  woe  to  the 
city,  and  its  destruction  in  forty  days. 

That  sin  caused  this  plague  is  certain,  but  it  was  sanitary 
sin.  Both  before  and  after  this  culmination  of  the  disease 
cases  of  plague  were  constantly  occurring  in  London  through- 
out the  seventeenth  century  ;  but  about  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  it  began  to  disappear.  The  great  fire 
had  done  a  good  work  by  sweeping  off  many  causes  and 
centres  of  infection,  and  there  had  come  wider  streets,  better 
pavements,  and  improved  water  supply  ;  so  that,  with  the 
disappearance  of  the  plague,  other  diseases,  especially  dysen- 
teries, which  had  formerly  raged  in  the  city,  became  much 
less  frequent. 

But,  while  these  epidemics  were  thus  checked  in  London, 
others  developed  by  sanitary  ignorance  raged  fearfully  both 
there  and  elsewhere,  and  of  these  perhaps  the  most  fearful 
was  the  jail  fever.  The  prisons  of  that  period  were  vile  be- 
yond belief.  Men  were  confined  in  dungeons  rarely  if  ever 
disinfected  after  the  death  of  previous  occupants,  and  on 
corridors  connecting  directly  with  the  foulest  sewers:  there 
was  no  proper  disinfection,  ventilation,  or  drainage ;  hence 
in  most  of  the  large  prisons  for  criminals  or  debtors  the  jail 
fever  was  supreme,  and  from  these  centres  it  frequently 
spread  through  the  adjacent  towns.  This  was  especially  the 
case  during  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  In  the 
Black  Assize  at  Oxford,  in  1577,  the  chief  baron,  the  sheriff, 


84  FROM    FETICH    TO   HYGIENE. 

and  about  three  hundred  men  died  within  forty  hours.  Lord 
Bacon  declared  the  jail  fever  "  the  most  pernicious  infection 
next  to  the  plague."  In  1730,  at  the  Dorsetshire  Assize,  the 
chief  baron  and  many  lawyers  were  killed  by  it.  The  High 
Sheriff  of  Somerset  also  took  the  disease  and  died.  A  single 
Scotch  regiment,  being  infected  from  some  prisoners,  lost  no 
less  than  two  hundred.  In  1750  the  disease  was  so  virulent 
at  Newgate,  in  the  heart  of  London,  that  two  judges,  the 
lord  mayor,  sundry  aldermen,  and  many  others,  died  of  it. 

It  is  worth  noting  that,  while  efforts  at  sanitary  dealing 
with  this  state  of  things  were  few,  the  theological  spirit 
developed  a  new  and  special  form  of  prayer  for  the  sufferers 
and  placed  it  in  the  Irish  Prayer  Book. 

These  forms  of  prayer  seem  to  have  been  the  main  reli- 
ance through  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But 
about  1750  began  the  work  of  John  Howard,  who  visited 
the  prisons  of  England,  made  known  their  condition  to  the 
world,  and  never  rested  until  they  were  greatly  improved. 
Then  he  applied  the  same  benevolent  activity  to  prisons  in 
other  countries,  in  the  far  East,  and  in  southern  Europe,  and 
finally  laid  down  his  life,  a  victim  to  disease  contracted  on 
one  of  his  missions  of  mercy ;  but  the  hygienic  reforms  he 
began  were  developed  more  and  more  until  this  fearful  blot 
upon  modern  civilization  was  removed.* 


*  For  Erasmus,  see  the  letter  cited  in  Bascome,  History  of  Epidemic  Pestilences, 
London,  1851.  For  account  of  the  condition  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  presence  cham- 
ber, see  the  same,  p.  206  ;  see  also  the  same  for  attempts  at  sanitation  by  Caius, 
Mead,  Pringle,  and  others  ;  and  see  Baas  and  various  medical  authorities.  For  the 
plague  in  London,  see  Green's  History  of  the  English  People,  chap,  ix,  sec.  2  ;  and 
for  a  more  detailed  account,  see  Lingard,  History  of  England,  enlarged  edition  of 
1S49,  v°l-  *x>  PP-  io7  *t  se1-  For  full  scientific  discussion  of  this  and  other  plagues 
from  a  medical  point  of  view,  see  Creighton,  History  of  Epidemics  in  Great  Britain, 
vol.  ii,  chap.  i.  For  the  London  plague  as  a  punishment  for  Sabbath-breaking,  see 
A  Divine  Tragedie  lately  acted,  or  A  collection  of  sundrie  memorable  examples  of 
God's  judgements  upon  Sabbath  Breakers  and  other  like  libertines,  etc.,  by  that  worthy 
divine,  Mr.  Henry  Burton,  1641.  The  book  gives  fifty-six  accounts  of  Sabbath- 
breakers  sorely  punished,  generally  struck  dead,  in  England,  with  places,  names, 
and  dates.  For  a  general  account  of  the  condition  of  London  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  and  the  diminution  of  the  plague  by  the  rebuilding  of  some 
parts  of  the  city  after  the  great  fire,  see  Lecky,  History  of  England  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  vol.  i,  pp.  592,  593.  For  the  jail  fever,  see  Lecky,  vol.  i,  pp. 
500-503. 


GRADUAL   DECAY   OF   THEOLOGICAL   VIEWS.  3,- 

The  same  thing  was  seen  in  the  Protestant  colonies  of 
America ;  but  here,  while  plagues  were  steadily  attributed 
to  Divine  wrath  or  Satanic  malice,  there  was  one  case  in 
which  it  was  claimed  that  such  a  visitation  was  due  to  the 
Divine  mercy.  The  pestilence  among  the  Indians,  before  the 
arrival  of  the  Plymouth  Colony,  was  attributed  in  a  notable 
work  of  that  period  to  the  Divine  purpose  of  clearing  New 
England  for  the  heralds  of  the  gospel ;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  plagues  which  destroyed  the  white  population  were  at- 
tributed by  the  same  authority  to  devils  and  witches.  In 
Cotton  Mather's  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  J I  'or/d,  published  at 
Boston  in  1693,  we  have  striking  examples  of  this.  The 
great  Puritan  divine  tells  us : 

"  Plagues  are  some  of  those  woes,  with  which  the  Divil 
troubles  us.  It  is  said  of  the  Israelites,  in  1  Cor.  10.  10. 
They  zuere  destroyed  of  the  destroyer.  That  is,  they  had  the 
Plague  among  them.  'Tis  the  Destroyer,  or  the  Divil,  that 
scatters  Plagues  about  the  World :  Pestilential  and  Con- 
tagious Diseases,  'tis  the  Divel,  who  do's  oftentimes  Invade 
us  with  them.  'Tis  no  uneasy  thing,  for  the  Divel,  to  im- 
pregnate the  Air  about  us,  with  such  Malignant  Salts,  as 
meeting  with  the  Salt  of  our  Microcosm,  shall  immediately 
cast  us  into  that  Fermentation  and  Putrefaction,  which  will 
utterly  dissolve  All  the  Vital  Tyes  within  us ;  Ev'n  as  an 
Aqua  Fortis,  made  with  a  conjunction  of  Nitre  and  Vitriol, 
Corrodes  what  it  Siezes  upon.  And  when  the  Divel  has 
raised  those  Arsenical  Fumes,  which  become  Venomous 
Quivers  full  of  Terrible  Arrows,  how  easily  can  he  shoot 
the  deleterious  Miasms  into  those  Juices  or  Bowels  of  Men's 
Bodies,  which  will  soon  Enflame  them  with  a  Mortal  Fire ! 
Hence  come  such  Plagues,  as  that  Beesome  of  Destruction 
which  within  our  memory  swept  away  such  a  throng  of  peo- 
ple from  one  English  City  in  one  Visitation  :  and  hence  those 
Infectious  Feavers,  which  are  but  so  many  Disguised  Plagues 
among  us,  Causing  Epidemical  Desolations." 

Mather  gives  several  instances  of  witches  causing  dis- 
eases, and  speaks  of  "some  long  Bow'd  down  under  such  a 
Spirit  of  Infirmity"  being  "  Marvelously  Recovered  upon 
the  Death  of  the  Witches,"  of  which  he  gives  an  instance. 
He  also  cites  a  case  where  a  patient  "  was   brought    unto 


86  FROM    FETICH    TO   HYGIENE. 

death's  door  and  so  remained  until  the  witch  was  taken  and 
carried  away  by  the  constable,  when  he  began  at  once  to 
recover  and  was  soon  well."  * 

In  France  we  see,  during  generation  after  generation,  a 
similar  history  evolved  ;  pestilence  after  pestilence  came, 
and  was  met  by  various  fetiches.  Noteworthy  is  the  plague 
at  Marseilles  near  the  beginning  of  the  last  century.  The 
chronicles  of  its  sway  are  ghastly.  They  speak  of  great 
heaps  of  the  unburied  dead  in  the  public  places,  "  forming 
pestilential  volcanoes  "  ;  of  plague-stricken  men  and  women 
in  delirium  wandering  naked  through  the  streets  ;  of  churches 
and  shrines  thronged  with  great  crowds  shrieking  for  mercy  ; 
of  other  crowds  flinging  themselves  into  the  wildest  de- 
bauchery ;  of  robber  bands  assassinating  the  dying  and  plun- 
dering the  dead  ;  of  three  thousand  neglected  children  col- 
lected in  one  hospital  and  then  left  to  die ;  and  of  the  death- 
roll  numbering  at  last  fifty  thousand  out  of  a  population  of 
less  than  ninety  thousand. 

In  the  midst  of  these  fearful  scenes  stood  a  body  of  men 
and  women  worthy  to  be  held  in  eternal  honour — the  physi- 
cians from  Paris  and  Montpellier ;  the  mayor  of  the  city, 
and  one  or  two  of  his  associates ;  but,  above  all,  the  Cheva- 
lier Roze  and  Bishop  Belzunce.  The  history  of  these  men 
may  well  make  us  glory  in  human  nature  ;  but  in  all  this 
noble  group  the  figure  of  Belzunce  is  the  most  striking. 
Nobly  and  firmly,  when  so  many  others  even  among  the 
regular  and  secular  ecclesiastics  fled,  he  stood  by  his  flock: 
day  and  night  he  was  at  work  in  the  hospitals,  cheering  the 
living,  comforting  the  dying,  and  doing  what  was  possible 
for  the  decent  disposal  of  the  dead.  In  him  were  united  the 
two  great  antagonistic  currents  of  religion  and  of  theology. 
As  a  theologian  he  organized  processions  and  expiatory 
services,  which,  it  must  be  confessed,  rather  increased  the 

*  For  the  passages  from  Cotton  Mather,  see  his  book  as  cited,  pp.  17,  18,  also 
134,  145.  Johnson  declares  that  "by  this  meanes  Christ  .  .  .  not  only  made 
roome  for  His  people  to  plant,  but  also  tamed  the  hard  and  cruell  hearts  of  these 
barbarous  Indians,  insomuch  that  halfe  a  handful  of  His  people  landing  not  long 
after  in  Plymouth  Plantation,  found  little  resistance."  See  the  History  of  New 
England,  by  Edward  Johnson,  London,  1654.  Reprinted  in  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society's  Collection,  second  series,  vol.  i,  p.  67. 


GRADUAL   DECAY   OF   THEOLOGICAL   VIEWS. 


87 


disease  than  diminished  it;  moreover,  he  accepted  that  wild 
dream  of  a  hysterical  nun — the  worship  of  the  material, 
physical  sacred  heart  of  Jesus — and  was  one  of  the  first  to 
consecrate  his  diocese  to  it  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  re- 
ligious spirit  gave  in  him  one  of  its  most  beautiful  manifesta- 
tions in  that  or  any  other  century  ;  justly  have  the  people  of 
Marseilles  placed  his  statue  in  the  midst  of  their  city  in  an 
attitude  of  prayer  and  blessing. 

In  every  part  of  Europe  and  America,  down  to  a  recent 
period,  we  find  pestilences  resulting  from  carelessness  or 
superstition  still  called  "  inscrutable  providences."  As  late 
as  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  great  epidemics 
made  fearful  havoc  in  Austria,  the  main  means  against  them 
seem  to  have  been  grovelling  before  the  image  of  St.  Sebas- 
tian and  calling  in  special  "  witch-doctors  " — that  is,  monks 
who  cast  out  devils.  To  seek  the  aid  of  physicians  was,  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  these  monastic  centres,  very  generally 
considered  impious,  and  the  enormous  death  rate  in  such 
neighbourhoods  was  only  diminished  in  the  present  century, 
when  scientific  hygiene  began  to  make  its  way. 

The  old  view  of  pestilence  had  also  its  full  course  in  Cal- 
vinistic  Scotland  ;  the  only  difference  being  that,  while  in 
Roman  Catholic  countries  relief  was  sought  by  fetiches, 
gifts,  processions,  exorcisms,  burnings  of  witches,  and  other 
works  of  expiation,  promoted  by  priests;  in  Scotland,  after 
the  Reformation,  it  was  sought  in  fast-days  and  executions 
of  witches  promoted  by  Protestant  elders.  Accounts  of  the 
filthiness  of  Scotch  cities  and  villages,  down  to  a  period  well 
within  this  century,  seem  monstrous.  All  that  in  these 
days  is  swept  into  the  sewers  was  in  those  allowed  to  remain 
around  the  houses  or  thrown  into  the  streets.  The  old  the- 
ological theory,  that  "vain  is  the  help  of  man,"  checked  sci- 
entific thought  and  paralyzed  sanitary  endeavour.  The  re- 
sult was  natural :  between  the  thirteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  thirty  notable  epidemics  swept  the  country,  and 
some  of  them  carried  off  multitudes;  but  as  a  rule  these 
never  suggested  sanitary  improvement ;  they  were  called 
"visitations,"  attributed  to  Divine  wrath  against  human  sin, 
and  the  work  of  the  authorities  was  to  announce  the  partic- 
ular sin  concerned  and  to  declaim  agrainst  it.     Amazing:  the- 


88  FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 

ories  were  thus  propounded — theories  which  led  to  spasms 
of  severity  ;  and,  in  some  of  these,  offences  generally  pun- 
ished much  less  severely  were  visited  with  death.  Every 
pulpit  interpreted  the  ways  of  God  to  man  in  such  seasons 
so  as  rather  to  increase  than  to  diminish  the  pestilence.  The 
effect  of  thus  seeking  supernatural  causes  rather  than  natural 
may  be  seen  in  such  facts  as  the  death  by  plague  of  one 
fourth  of  the  whole  population  of  the  city  of  Perth  in  a  sin- 
gle year  of  the  fifteenth  century,  other  towns  suffering  simi- 
larly both  then  and  afterward. 

Here  and  there,  physicians  more  wisely  inspired  endeav- 
oured to  push  sanitary  measures,  and  in  1585  attempts  were 
made  to  clean  the  streets  of  Edinburgh ;  but  the  chroniclers 
tell  us  that  "  the  magistrates  and  ministers  gave  no  heed." 
One  sort  of  calamity,  indeed,  came  in  as  a  mercy — the  great 
fires  which  swept  through  the  cities,  clearing  and  cleaning 
them.  Though  the  town  council  of  Edinburgh  declared  the 
noted  fire  of  1700  "a  fearful  rebuke  of  God,"  it  was  observed 
that,  after  it  had  done  its  work,  disease  and  death  were 
greatly  diminished.* 


III.    THE    TRIUMPH    OF    SANITARY   SCIENCE. 

But  by  those  standing  in  the  higher  places  of  thought 
some  glimpses  of  scientific  truth  had  already  been  obtained, 
and  attempts  at  compromise  between  theology  and  science 
in  this  field  began  to  be  made,  not  only  by  ecclesiastics,  but 
first  of  all,  as  far  back  as  the  seventeenth  century,  by  a  man 
of  science  eminent  both  for  attainments  and  character — Rob- 
ert Boyle.  Inspired  by  the  discoveries  in  other  fields,  which 
had  swept  away  so  much  of  theological  thought,  he  could  no 

*  For  the  plague  at  Marseilles  and  its  depopulation,  see  Henri  Martin,  Histoire 
de  France,  vol.  xv,  especially  document  cited  in  appendix  ;  also  Gibbon,  Decline 
and  Fall,  chap,  xliii  ;  also  Rambaud.  For  the  resort  to  witch-doctors  in  Austria 
against  pestilence,  down  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  see  Biedermann, 
Deutschland  im  Achtzehnten  Jahrhundert.  For  the  resort  to  St.  Sebastian,  see  the 
widespread  editions  of  the  Vita  et  Gesta  Sancti  Sebastiani,  contra  pestem  patroni, 
prefaced  with  commendations  from  bishops  and  other  high  ecclesiastics.  The  edi- 
tion in  the  Cornell  University  Library  is  that  of  Augsburg,  1693.  For  the  reign  of 
filth  and  pestilence  in  Scotland,  see  Charles  Rogers,  D.  D.,  Social  Life  in  Scotland, 
Edinburgh,  1&84,  vol.  i,  pp.  305-316  ;  see  also  Buckle's  second  volume. 


THE    TRIUMPH    OF   SANITARY    SCIENCE. 


89 


longer  resist  the  conviction  that  some  epidemics  are  due — in 
his  own  words — "  to  a  tragical  concourse  of  natural  causes"  ; 
but  he  argued  that  some  of  these  may  be  the  result  of  Divine 
interpositions  provoked  by  human  sins.  As  time  went  on, 
great  difficulties  showed  themselves  in  the  way  of  this  com- 
promise— difficulties  theological  not  less  than  difficulties  sci- 
entific. To  a  Catholic  it  was  more  and  more  hard  to  explain 
the  theological  grounds  why  so  many  orthodox  cities,  firm 
in  the  faith,  were  punished,  and  so  many  heretical  cities 
spared ;  and  why,  in  regions  devoted  to  the  Church,  the 
poorer  people,  whose  faith  in  theological  fetiches  was  un- 
questioning, died  in  times  of  pestilence  like  flies,  while  scep- 
tics so  frequently  escaped.  Difficulties  of  the  same  sort  be- 
set devoted  Protestants ;  they,  too,  might  well  ask  why  it 
was  that  the  devout  peasantry  in  their  humble  cottages  per- 
ished, while  so  much  larger  a  proportion  of  the  more  scep- 
tical upper  classes  were  untouched.  Gradually  it  dawned 
both  upon  Catholic  and  Protestant  countries  that,  if  any  sin 
be  punished  by  pestilence,  it  is  the  sin  of  filthiness ;  more 
and  more  it  began  to  be  seen  by  thinking  men  of  both  re- 
ligions that  Wesley's  great  dictum  stated  even  less  than  the 
truth ;  that  not  only  was  "  cleanliness  akin  to  godliness,"  but 
that,  as  a  means  of  keeping  off  pestilence,  it  was  far  superior 
to  godliness  as  godliness  was  then  generally  understood.* 

The  recent  history  of  sanitation  in  all  civilized  countries 
shows  triumphs  which  might  well  fill  us  with  wonder,  did 
there  not  rise  within  us  a  far  greater  wonder  that  they  were 
so  long  delayed.  Amazing  is  it  to  see  how  near  the  world 
has  come  again  and  again  to  discovering  the  key  to  the  cause 
and  cure  of  pestilence.  It  is  now  a  matter  of  the  simplest 
elementary  knowledge  that  some  of  the  worst  epidemics  are 
conveyed  in  water.  But  this  fact  seems  to  have  been  dis- 
covered many  times  in  human  history.  In  the  Peloponnc- 
sian  war  the  Athenians  asserted  that  their  enemies  had  poi- 
soned their'cisterns ;  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  people  gener- 
ally declared  that  the  Jews  had  poisoned  their  wells  ;  and 
as  late  as  the  cholera  of  1832  the  Parisian  mob  insisted  that 
the  water-carriers  who  distributed  water  for  drinking  pur- 

*  For  Boyle's  attempt  at  compromise,  see  Discourse-  on  the  Air,  in  his  works, 
vol.  iv,  pp.  288,  289,  cited  by  Buckle,  vol.  i,  pp.  128,  129,  note. 


go 


FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 


poses  from  the  Seine,  polluted  as  it  was  by  sewage,  had  pois- 
oned it,  and  in  some  cases  murdered  them  on  this  charge  : 
so  far  did  this  feeling  go  that  locked  covers  were  sometimes 
placed  upon  the  water-buckets.  Had  not  such  men  as  Roger 
Bacon  and  his  long  line  of  successors  been  thwarted  by  theo- 
logical authority, — had  not  such  men  as  Thomas  Aquinas, 
Vincent  of  Beauvais,  and  Albert  the  Great  been  drawn  or 
driven  from  the  paths  of  science  into  the  dark,  tortuous 
paths  of  theology,  leading  no  whither, — the  world  to-day,  at 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  would  have  arrived  at  the 
solution  of  great  problems  and  the  enjoyment  of  great  results 
which  will  only  be  reached  at  the  end  of  the  twentieth  cen. 
tury,  and  even  in  generations  more  remote.  Diseases  like 
typhoid  fever,  influenza  and  pulmonary  consumption,  scarlet 
fever,  diphtheria,  pneumonia,  and  la  grippe,  which  now  carry 
off  so  many  most  precious  lives,  would  have  long  since 
ceased  to  scourge  the  world. 

Still,  there  is  one  cause  for  satisfaction :  the  law  govern- 
ing the  relation  of  theology  to  disease  is  now  well  before 
the  world,  and  it  is  seen  in  the  fact  that,  just  in  proportion  as 
the  world  progressed  from  the  sway  of  Hippocrates  to  that 
of  the  ages  of  faith,  so  it  progressed  in  the  frequency  and 
severity  of  great  pestilences;  and  that,  on  the  other  hand, 
just  in  proportion  as  the  world  has  receded  from  that  period 
when  theology  was  all-pervading  and  all-controlling,  plague 
after  plague  has  disappeared,  and  those  remaining  have  be- 
come less  and  less  frequent  and  virulent.* 

The  recent  history  of  hygiene  in  all  countries  shows  a 
long  series  of  victories,  and  these  may  well  be  studied  in 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States.  In  the  former,  though 
there  had  been  many  warnings  from  eminent  physicians, 
and  above  all  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, 
from  men  like  Caius,  Mead,  and  Pringle,  the  result  was  far 
short  of  what  might  have  been  gained ;  and  it  was  only  in 
the  year  1838  that  a  systematic  sanitary  effort  was  begun  in 

*  For  the  charge  of  poisoning  water  and  producing  pestilence  among  the  Greeks, 
see  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  vol.  vi,  p.  213.  For  a  similar  charge  against  the  Jews 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  see  various  histories  already  cited  ;  and  for  the  great  popular 
prejudice  against  water-carriers  at  Paris  in  recent  times,  see  the  larger  iecent  French 
histories. 


THE   TRIUMPH    OF    SANITARY   SCIENCE.  gi 

England  by  the  public  authorities.  The  state  of  things  at 
that  time,  though  by  comparison  with  the  Middle  Ag<  3 
happy,  was,  by  comparison  with  what  has  since  been  gained, 
fearful :  the  death  rate  among  all  classes  was  high,  but  among 
the  poor  it  was  ghastly.  Out  of  seventy-seven  thousand 
paupers  in  London  during  the  years  1837  and  1838,  fourteen 
thousand  were  suffering  from  fever,  and  of  these  nearlv  six 
thousand  from  typhus.  In  many  other  parts  of  the  British 
Islands  the  sanitary  condition  was  no  better.  A  noble  body 
of  men  grappled  with  the  problem,  and  in  a  few  years  one  of 
these  rose  above  hie  fellows — the  late  Edwin  Chadwick.  The 
opposition  to  his  work  was  bitter,  and,  though  many  church- 
men aided  him,  the  support  given  by  theologians  and  eccle- 
siastics as  a  whole  was  very  far  short  of  what  it  should  have 
been.  Too  many  of  them  were  occupied  in  that  most  costly 
and  most  worthless  of  all  processes,  "  the  saving  of  souls  "  by 
the  inculcation  of  dogma.  Yet  some  of  the  higher  ecclesias- 
tics and  many  of  the  lesser  clergy  did  much,  sometimes  risk- 
ing their  lives,  and  one  of  them,  Sidney  Godolphin  Osborne, 
deserves  lasting  memory  for  his  struggle  to  make  known  the 
sanitary  wants  of  the  peasantry. 

Chadwick  began  to  be  widely  known  in  1848  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Board  of  Health,  and  was  driven  out  for  a  time 
for  overzeal ;  but  from  one  point  or  another,  during  forty 
years,  he  fought  the  opposition,  developed  the  new  work, 
and  one  of  the  best  exhibits  of  its  results  is  shown  in  his  ad- 
dress before  the  Sanitary  Conference  at  Brighton  in  1888. 
From  this  and  other  perfectly  trustworthy  sources  some  idea 
may  be  gained  of  the  triumph  of  the  scientific  over  the  theo- 
logical method  of  dealing  with  disease,  whether  epidemic  or 
sporadic. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  annual 
mortality  of  London  is  estimated  at  not  less  than  eighty  in  a 
thousand  ;  about  the  middle  of  this  century  it  stood  at  twen- 
ty-four in  a  thousand  ;  in  1889  it  stood  at  less  than  eighteen 
in  a  thousand  ;  and  in  many  parts  the  most  recent  statistics 
show  that  it  has  been  brought  down  to  fourteen  or  fifteen  in 
a  thousand.  A  quarter  of  a  century  ago  the  death  rate  from 
disease  in  the  Royal  Guards  at  London  was  twenty  in  a 
thousand;  in   1888  it  had  been  reduced  to  six  in  a  thousand. 


92 


FROM    FETICH    TO   HYGIENE. 


In  the  army  generally  it  had  been  seventeen  in  a  thousand, 
but  it  has  been  reduced  until  it  now  stands  at  eight.  In  the 
old  Indian  army  it  had  been  sixty-nine  in  a  thousand,  but  of 
late  it  has  been  brought  down  first  to  twenty,  and  finally  to 
fourteen.  Mr.  Chad  wick  in  his  speech  proved  that  much 
more  might  be  done,  for  he  called  attention  to  the  German 
army,  where  the  death  rate  from  disease  has  been  reduced 
to  between  five  and  six  in  a  thousand.  The  Public  Health 
Act  having  been  passed  in  1875,  the  death  rate  in  England 
among  men  fell,  between  1871  and  1880,  more  than  four  in  a 
thousand,  and  among  women  more  than  six  in  a  thousand. 
In  the  decade  between  185 1  and  i860  there  died  of  diseases 
attributable  to  defective  drainage  and  impure  water  over 
four  thousand  persons  in  every  million  throughout  England  : 
these  numbers  have  declined  until  in  1888  there  died  less 
than  two  thousand  in  every  million.  The  most  striking  dimi- 
nution of  the  deaths  from  such  causes  was  found  in  1891,  in 
the  case  of  typhoid  fever,  that  diminution  being  fifty  per 
cent.  As  to  the  scourge  which,  next  to  plagues  like  the 
Black  Death,  was  formerly  the  most  dreaded — smallpox — 
there  died  of  it  in  London  during  the  year  1890  just  one  per- 
son. Drainage  in  Bristol  reduced  the  death  rate  by  con- 
sumption from  4.4  to  2.3;  at  Cardiff,  from  3.47  to  2.31  ;  and 
in  all  England  and  Wales,  from  2.68  in  185 1  to  1.55  in  1888. 

What  can  be  accomplished  by  better  sanitation  is  also 
seen  to-day  by  a  comparison  between  the  death  rate  among 
the  children  outside  and  inside  the  charity  schools.  The 
death  rate  among  those  outside  in  1881  was  twelve  in  a  thou- 
sand ;  while  inside,  where  the  children  were  under  sanitary 
regulations  maintained  by  competent  authorities,  it  has  been 
brought  down  first  to  eight,  then  to  four,  and  finally  to  less 
than  three  in  a  thousand. 

In  view  of  statistics  like  these,  it  becomes  clear  that 
Edwin  Chadwick  and  his  compeers  among  the  sanitary 
authorities  have  in  half  a  century  done  far  more  to  reduce 
the  rate  of  disease  and  death  than  has  been  done  in  fifteen 
hundred  years  by  all  the  fetiches  which  theological  reason- 
ing could  devise  or  ecclesiastical  power  enforce. 

Not  less  striking  has  been  the  history  of  hygiene  in 
France :  thanks   to  the   decline  of  theological  control  over 


THE  RELATION  OF  SANITARY  SCIENCE  TO  RELIGION.       g-- 

the  universities,  to  the  abolition  of  monasteries,  and  to  such 
labours  in  hygienic  research  and  improvement  as  those  of 
Tardieu,  Levy,  and  Bouchardat,  a  wondrous  change  has 
been  wrought  in  public  health.  Statistics  carefully  kept 
show  that  the  mean  length  of  human  life  has  been  remark- 
ably increased.  In  the  eighteenth  century  it  was  but  twenty- 
three  years  ;  from  1825  to  1830  it  was  thirty-two  years  and 
eight  months;  and  since  1864,  thirty-seven  years  and  six 
months. 


IV.   THE    RELATION   OF    SANITARY   SCIENCE    TO    RELIGION. 

The  question  may  now  arise  whether  this  progress  in 
sanitary  science  has  been  purchased  at  any  real  sacrifice  of 
religion  in  its  highest  sense.  One  piece  of  recent  history  in- 
dicates an  answer  to  this  question.  The  Second  Empire  in 
France  had  its  head  in  Napoleon  III,  a  noted  Voltairean.  At 
the  climax  of  his  power  he  determined  to  erect  an  Academy 
of  Music  which  should  be  the  noblest  building  of  its  kind. 
It  was  projected  on  a  scale  never  before  known,  at  least  in 
modern  times,  and  carried  on  for  years,  millions  being  lavished 
upon  it.  *\.t  the  same  time  the  emperor  determined  to  re- 
build the  Hotel-Dieu,  the  great  Paris  hospital ;  this,  too,  was 
projected  on  a  greater  scale  than  anything  of  the  kind  ever 
before  known,  and  also  required  millions.  But  in  the  erection 
of  these  two  buildings  the  emperor's  determination  was  dis- 
tinctly made  known,  that  with  the  highest  provision  for  aes- 
thetic enjoyment  there  should  be  a  similar  provision,  moving 
on  parallel  lines,  for  the  relief  of  human  suffering.  This 
plan  was  carried  out  to  the  letter :  the  Palace  of  the  Opera 
and  the  Hotel-Dieu  went  on  with  equal  steps,  and  the  former 
was  not  allowed  to  be  finished  before  the  latter.  Among  all 
the  "  most  Christian  kings  "  of  the  house  of  Bourbon  who 
had  preceded  him  for  five  hundred  years,  history  shows  no 
such  obedience  to  the  religious  and  moral  sense  of  the  nation. 
Catharine  de'  Medici  and  her  sons,  plunging  the  nation  into 
the  great  wars  of  religion,  never  showed  any  such  feeling; 
Louis  XIV,  revoking  the  Edict  of  Nantes  for  the  glory  of 
God,  and  bringing  the  nation  to  sorrow  during  many  gen- 
erations, never  dreamed  of  making  the  construction  of  his 


94  FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 

palaces  and  public  buildings  wait  upon  the  demands  of 
charity  ;  Louis  XV,  so  subservient  to  the  Church  in  all 
things,  never  betrayed  the  slightest  consciousness  that,  while 
making  enormous  expenditures  to  gratify  his  own  and  the 
national  vanity,  he  ought  to  carry  on  works,  pari  passu,  for 
charity.  Nor  did  the  French  nation,  at  those  periods  when 
it  was  most  largely  under  the  control-  of  theological  consid- 
erations, seem  to  have  any  inkling  of  the  idea  that  nation  or 
monarch  should  make  provision  for  relief  from  human  suf- 
fering, to  justify  provision  for  the  sumptuous  enjoyment  of 
art :  it  was  reserved  for  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  to  develop  this  feeling  so  strongly,  though  quietly, 
that  Napoleon  III,  notoriously  an  unbeliever  in  all  ortho- 
doxy, was  obliged  to  recognise  it  and  to  set  this  great  ex- 
ample. 

Nor  has  the  recent  history  of  the  United  States  been  less 
fruitful  in  lessons.  Yellow  fever,  which  formerly  swept  not 
only  Southern  cities  but  even  New  York  and  Philadelphia, 
has  now  been  almost  entirely  warded  off.  Such  epidemics 
as  that  in  Memphis  a  few  years  since,  and  the  immunity  of 
the  city  from  such  visitations  since  its  sanitary  condition 
was  changed  by  Mr.  Waring,  are  a  most  striking  object  les- 
son to  the  whole  country.  Cholera,  which  again  and  again 
swept  the  country,  has  ceased  to  be  feared  by  the  public  at 
large.  Typhus  fever,  once  so  deadly,  is  now  rarely  heard 
of.  Curious  is  it  to  find  that  some  of  the  diseases  which  in 
the  olden  time  swept  off  myriads  on  myriads  in  every  coun- 
try, now  cause  fewer  deaths  than  some  diseases  thought 
of  little  account,  and  for  the  cure  of  which  people  there- 
fore rely,  to  their  cost,  on  quackery  instead  of  medical 
science. 

This  development  of  sanitary  science  and  hygiene  in  the 
United  States  has  also  been  coincident  with  a  marked  change 
in  the  attitude  of  the  American  pulpit  as  regards  the  theory 
of  disease.  In  this  country,  as  in  others,  down  to  a  period 
within  living  memory,  deaths  due  to  want  of  sanitary  pre- 
cautions were  constantly  dwelt  upon  in  funeral  sermons  as 
"  results  of  national  sin,"  or  as  "  inscrutable  Providences." 
That  view  has  mainly  passed  away  among  the  clergy  of  the 
more  enlightened   parts  of  the  country,  and  we  now  find 


THE  RELATION  OF  SANITARY  SCIENCE  TO  RELIGION.       g- 

them,  as  a  rule,  active  in  spreading  useful  ideas  as  to  the 
prevention  of  disease.  The  religious  press  has  been  especiallv 
faithful  in  this  respect,  carrying  to  every  household  more 
just  ideas  of  sanitary  precautions  and  hygienic  living. 

The  attitude  even  of  many  among  the  most  orthodox 
rulers  in  church  and  state  has  been  changed  by  facts  like 
these.  Lord  Palmerston  refusing  the  request  of  the  Scotch 
clergy  that  a  fast  day  be  appointed  to  ward  off  cholera,  and 
advising  them  to  go  home  and  clean  their  streets, — the  devout 
Emperor  William  II  forbidding  prayer-meetings  in  a  similar 
emergency,  on  the  ground  that  they  led  to  neglect  of  prac- 
tical human  means  of  help, — all  this  is  in  striking  contrast  to 
the  older  methods. 

Well  worthy  of  note  is  the  ground  taken  in  1S93,  at 
Philadelphia,  by  an  eminent  divine  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church.  The  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania  having  issued  a 
special  call  to  prayer  in  order  to  ward  off  the  cholera,  this 
clergyman  refused  to  respond  to  the  call,  declaring  that  to 
do  so,  in  the  filthy  condition  of  the  streets  then  prevailing 
in  Philadelphia,  would  be  blasphemous. 

In  summing  up  the  whole  subject,  we  see  that  in  this 
field,  as  in  so  many  others,  the  triumph  of  scientific  thought 
has  gradually  done  much  to  evolve  in  the  world  not  onlv  a 
theology  but  also  a  religious  spirit  more  and  more  worthy 
of  the  goodness  of  God  and  of  the  destiny  of  man.* 


*  On  the  improvement  in  sanitation  in  London  and  elsewhere  in  the  north  of 
Europe,  see  the  editorial  and  Report  of  the  Conference  on  Sanitation  at  Brighton, 
given  in  the  London  Times  of  August  27,  1888.  For  the  best  authorities  on  the 
general  subject  in  England,  see  Sir  John  Simon  on  English  Sanitary  Institutions, 
1890;  also  his  published  Health  Reports  for  1887,  cited  in  the  Edinburgh  Review 
for  January,  1891.  See  also  Parker's  Hygiene,  passim.  For  the  great  increase-  of 
the  mean  length  of  life  in  France  under  better  hygienic  conditions,  see  Rambaud, 
La  Civilisation  contemporaine  en  /'ranee,  p.  682.  For  the  approach  to  depopula- 
tion at  Memphis,  under  the  cesspool  system  in  1878,  see  Parkes,  Hygiene,  American 
appendix,  p.  397.  For  the  facts  brought  out  in  the  investigation  of  the  depart- 
ments of  the  city  of  New  York  by  the  Committee  of  the  State  Senate,  of  which 
the  present  writer  was  a  member,  see  New  York  Senate  Documents  tor  1  365.  I  or 
decrease  of  death  rate  in  New  York  city  under  the  new  Board  of  Health,  begin- 
ning in  1866,  and  especially  among  children,  see  Buck,  Hygiene  and  Popular 
Health,  New  York,  1879,  vol.  ii,  p.  573  ;  and  for  wise  remarks  on  religious  duties 
dnring  pestilence,  see  ibid.,  vol.  ii,  p.  579.  For  a  contrast  between  the  old  and 
new  ideas  regarding  pestilences,  see  Charles  Kingsley  in  Eraser 's  Magazine,  vol.  lviii, 


g6  FROM    FETICH    TO    HYGIENE. 

p.  134 ;  also  the  sermon  of  Dr.  Burns,  in  1875,  at  the  Cathedral  of  Glasgow  be- 
fore the  Social  Science  Congress.  For  a  particularly  bright  and  valuable  state- 
ment of  the  triumphs  of  modern  sanitation,  see  Mrs.  Plunkett's  article  in  The 
Popular  Science  Monthly  for  June,  1891.  For  the  reply  of  Lord  Palmerston  to 
the  Scotch  clergy,  see  the  well-known  passage  in  Buckle.  For  the  order  of  the 
Emperor  William,  see  various  newspapers  for  September,  1892,  and  especially 
Public  Opinion  for  September  24th. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

FROM  "DEMONIACAL    POSSESSION"    TO 
INSANITY. 

I.   THEOLOGICAL    IDEAS   OF    LUNACY   AND    ITS   TREATMENT. 

Of  all  the  triumphs  won  by  science  for  humanity,  few 
have  been  farther-reaching  in  good  effects  than  the  modern 
treatment  of  the  insane.  But  this  is  the  result  of  a  struggle 
lonp-  and  severe  between  two  great  forces.  On  one  side 
have  stood  the  survivals  of  various  superstitions,  the  meta- 
physics of  various  philosophies,  the  dogmatism  of  various 
theologies,  the  literal  interpretation  of  various  sacred  books, 
and  especially  of  our  own — all  compacted  into  a  creed  that 
insanity  is  mainly  or  largely  demoniacal  possession ;  on  the 
other  side  has  stood  science,  gradually  accumulating  proofs 
that  insanity  is  always  the  result  of  physical  disease. 

I  purpose  in  this  chapter  to  sketch,  as  briefly  as  I  may, 
the  history  of  this  warfare,  or  rather  of  this  evolution  of  truth 
out  of  error. 

Nothing  is  more  simple  and  natural,  in  the  early  stages 
of  civilization,  than  belief  in  occult,  self-conscious  powers  of 
evil.  Troubles  and  calamities  come  upon  man  ;  his  igno- 
rance of  physical  laws  forbids  him  to  attribute  them  to  phys- 
ical causes;  he  therefore  attributes  them  sometimes  to  the 
wrath  of  a  good  being,  but  more  frequently  to  the  malice  of 
an  evil  being. 

Especially  is  this  the  case  with  diseases.  The  real  causes 
of  disease  are  so  intricate  that  they  are  reached  only  after 
ages  of  scientific  labour;  hence  they,  above  all,  have  been 
attributed  to  the  influence  of  evil  spirits.* 


*  On  the  general  attribution  of  disease  to  demoniacal  influence,  sec  Sprenger, 
History  of  Medicine,  passim  (note,  lor  a  later  attitude,  vol.  ii,  pp.   150-170,   178); 
35  97 


QS  FROM    "DEMONIACAL    POSSESSION"   TO    INSANITY. 

But,  if  ordinary  diseases  were  likely  to  be  attributed  to 
diabolical  agency,  how  much  more  diseases  of  the  brain,  and 
especially  the  more  obscure  of  these  !  These,  indeed,  seemed 
to  the  vast  majority  of  mankind  possible  only  on  the  theory 
of  Satanic  intervention  :  any  approach  to  a  true  theory  of  the 
connection  between  physical  causes  and  mental  results  is  one 
of  the  highest  acquisitions  of  science. 

Here  and  there,  during  the  whole  historic  period,  keen 
men  had  obtained  an  inkling  of  the  truth  ;  but  to  the  vast 
multitude,  down  to  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  noth- 
ing was  more  clear  than  that  insanity  is,  in  many  if  not  in 
most  cases,  demoniacal  possession. 

Yet  at  a  very  early  date,  in  Greece  and  Rome,  science 
had  asserted  itself,  and  a  beginning  had  been  made  which 
seemed  destined  to  bring  a  large  fruitage  of  blessings.*  In 
the  fifth  century  before  the  Christian  era,  Hippocrates  of  Cos 
asserted  the  great  truth  that  all  madness  is  simply  disease 
of  the  brain,  thereby  beginning  a  development  of  truth  and 
mercy  which  lasted  nearly  a  thousand  years.  In  the  first 
century  after  Christ,  Aretceus  carried  these  ideas  yet  further, 
observed  the  phenomena  of  insanity  with  great  acuteness, 
and  reached  yet  more  valuable  results.  Near  the  beginning 
of  the  following  century,  Soranus  went  still  further  in  the 

Calmeil,  De  la  Folie,  Paris,  1845,  vol.  i,  pp.  104,  105  ;  Esquirol,  Des  Maladies  Men- 
tales,  Paris,  1838,  vol.  i,  p.  482  ;  also  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture.  For  a  very  plain 
and  honest  statement  of  this  view  in  our  own  sacred  books,  see  Oort,  Hooykaas, 
and  Kuenen,  The  Bible  for  Young  People,  English  translation,  chap,  v,  p.  167,  and 
following  ;  also  Farrar's  Life  of  Christ,  chap.  xvii.  For  this  idea  in  Greece  and 
elsewhere,  see  Maury,  La  Magie,  etc.,  vol.  iii,  p.  276,  giving,  among  other  citations, 
one  from  book  v  of  the  Odyssey.  On  the  influence  of  Platonism,  see  Esquirol  and 
others,  as  above — the  main  passage  cited  is  from  the  P/urdo.  For  the  devotion  of 
the  early  fathers  and  doctors  to  this  idea,  see  citations  from  Eusebius,  Lactantius, 
St.  Jerome,  St.  Augustine,  St.  John  Chrysostom,  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen,  in  Tissot, 
L' Imagination,  p.  369  ;  also  Jacob  (i.  e.,  Paul  Lacroix),  Croyances  Fopulaires,  p. 
183.  For  St.  Augustine,  see  also  his  De  Civitate  Dei,  lib.  xxii,  chap,  viii,  and  his 
Enarratio  in  Psal.,  cxxxv,  I.  For  the  breaking  away  of  the  religious  orders  in 
Italy  from  the  entire  supremacy  of  this  idea,  see  Becavin,  L'JfScole  de  Salerne,  Paris, 
18S8  ;  also  Daremberg,  Histoire  de  la  Me"decine.  Even  so  late  as  the  Protestant 
Reformation,  Martin  Luther  maintained  (  Table  Talk,  Hazlitt's  translation,  Lon- 
don, 1872,  pp.  250-256)  that  "  Satan  produces  all  the  maladies  which  afflict  man- 
kind." 

*  It  is  significant  of  this  scientific  attitude  that  the  Greek  word  for  superstition 
means,  literally,  fear  of  gods  or  demons. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT,      qq 

same  path,  giving  new  results  of  research,  and  strengthening 
scientific  truth.  Toward  the  end  of  the  same  century  a  new 
epoch  was  ushered  in  by  Galen,  under  whom  the  same  truth 
was  developed  yet  further,  and  the  path  toward  merciful 
treatment  of  the  insane  made  yet  more  clear.  In  the  third 
century  Celius  Aurelianus  received  this  deposit  of  precious 
truth,  elaborated  it,  and  brought  forth  the  great  idea  which, 
had  theology,  citing  biblical  texts,  not  banished  it,  would 
have  saved  fifteen  centuries  of  cruelty — an  idea  not  fully 
recognised  again  till  near  the  beginning  of  the  present  cen- 
tury— the  idea  that  insanity  is  brain  disease,  and  that  the 
treatment  of  it  must  be  gentle  and  kind.  In  the  sixth  cen- 
tury Alexander  of  Tralles  presented  still  more  fruitful  re- 
searches, and  taught  the  world  how  to  deal  with  melancholia ; 
and,  finally,  in  the  seventh  century,  this  great  line  of  scien- 
tific men,  working  mainly  under  pagan  auspices,  was  closed 
by  Paul  of  ^Egina,  who  under  the  protection  of  Caliph 
Omar  made  still  further  observations,  but,  above  all,  laid 
stress  on  the  cure  of  madness  as  a  disease,  and  on  the  abso- 
lute necessity  of  mild  treatment. 

Such  was  this  great  succession  in  the  apostolate  of  science: 
evidently  no  other  has  ever  shown  itself  more  directly  under 
Divine  grace,  illumination,  and  guidance.  It  had  given  to 
the  world  what  might  have  been  one  of  its  greatest  bless- 
ings.* 

This  evolution  of  divine  truth  was  interrupted  bv  the- 
ology. There  set  into  the  early  Church  a  current  of  belief 
which  was  destined  to  bring  all  these  noble  acquisitions  of 
science  and  religion  to  naught,  and,  during  centuries,  to  in- 
flict tortures,  physical  and  mental,  upon  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  innocent  men  and  women — a  belief  which  held  its 
cruel  sway  for  nearly  eighteen  centuries ;  and  this  belief 
was  that  madness  was  mainly  or  largely  possession  bv  the 
devil. 


*  For  authorities  regarding  this  development  of  scientific  truth  and  mercy  in 
antiquity,  see  especially  Krafft-Ebing,  Lekrbuch  dcr  Psychiatric,  Stuttgart,  1888, 
p.  40  and  the  pages  following;  Trelat,  Recherches  Historiques  sitr  la  /■',<//',-,  Paris, 
1839  '<  Semelaigne,  L' Alienation  mentalc  dans  V Antiquity  Paris,  1S09  ;  Dagron, 
Des  Ali/n/s,  Paris,  1875  ;  also  Calmeil,  De  la  Folie,  Sprenger,  and  especially  [sen- 
sed, Geschichte  der  Medicin,  Berlin,  1840. 


I00       FROM    "DEMONIACAL    POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

This  idea  of  diabolic  agency  in  mental  disease  had  grown 
luxuriantly  in  all  the  Oriental  sacred  literatures.  In  the  se- 
ries of  Assyrian  mythological  tablets  in  which  we  find  those 
legends  of  the  Creation,  the  Fall,  the  Flood,  and  other  early 
conceptions  from  which  the  Hebrews  so  largely  drew  the 
accounts  wrought  into  the  book  of  Genesis,  have  been  dis- 
covered the  formulas  for  driving  out  the  evil  spirits  which 
cause  disease.  In  the  Persian  theology  regarding  the  strug- 
gle of  the  great  powers  of  good  and  evil  this  idea  was  de- 
veloped to  its  highest  point.  From  these  and  other  ancient 
sources  the  Jews  naturally  received  this  addition  to  their  ear- 
lier view  :  the  Mocker  of  the  Garden  of  Eden  became  Satan, 
with  legions  of  evil  angels  at  his  command ;  and  the  theory 
of  diabolic  causes  of  mental  disease  took  a  firm  place  in  our 
sacred  books.  Such  cases  in  the  Old  Testament  as  the  evil 
spirit  in  Saul,  which  we  now  see  to  have  been  simply  melan- 
choly— and,  in  the  New  Testament,  the  various  accounts  of 
the  casting  out  of  devils,  through  which  is  refracted  the 
beautiful  and  simple  story  of  that  power  by  which  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  soothed  perturbed  minds  by  his  presence  or  quelled 
outbursts  of  madness  by  his  words,  give  examples  of  this.  In 
Greece,  too,  an  idea  akin  to  this  found  lodgment  both  in  the 
popular  belief  and  in  the  philosophy  of  Plato  and  Socrates ; 
and  though,  as  we  have  seen,  the  great  leaders  in  medical 
science  had  taught  with  more  or  less  distinctness  that  in- 
sanity is  the  result  of  physical  disease,  there  was  a  strong 
popular  tendency  to  attribute  the  more  troublesome  cases  of 
it  to  hostile  spiritual  influence.* 

From  all  these  sources,  but  especially  from  our  sacred 

*  For  the  exorcism  against  disease  found  at  Nineveh,  see  G.  Smith,  Delitzsch's 
German  translation,  p.  34.  For  a  very  interesting  passage  regarding  the  represen- 
tation of  a  diabolic  personage  on  a  Babylonian  bronze,  and  for  a  veiy  frank  state- 
ment regarding  the  transmission  of  ideas  regarding  Satanic  power  to  our  sacred 
books,  see  Sayce,  Herodotus,  appendix  ii,  p.  393.  It  is,  indeed,  extremely  doubt- 
ful whether  Plato  himself  or  his  contemporaries  knew  anything  of  evil  demons,  this 
conception  probably  coming  into  the  Greek  world,  as  into  the  Latin,  with  the  Ori- 
ental influences  that  began  to  prevail  about  the  time  of  the  birth  of  Christ  ;  but  to 
the  early  Christians  a  demon  was  a  demon,  and  Plato's,  good  or  bad,  were  pagan, 
and  therefore  devils.  The  Greek  word  "  epilepsy  "  is  itself  a  survival  of  the  old  be- 
lief, fossilized  in  a  word,  since  its  literal  meaning  refers  to  the  seizure  of  the  patient 
by  evil  spirits. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT,    ioi 

books  and  the  writings  of  Plato,  this  theory  that  mental  dis- 
ease is  caused  largely  or  mainly  by  Satanic  influence  passed 
on  into  the  early  Church.  In  the  apostolic  times  no  belief 
seems  to  have  been  more  firmly  settled.  The  early  fathers 
and  doctors  in  the  following  age  universally  accepted  it,  and 
the  apologists  generally  spoke  of  the  power  of  casting  out 
devils  as  a  leading  proof  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Christian 
religion. 

This  belief  took  firm  hold  upon  the  strongest  men.  The 
case  of  St.  Gregory  the  Great  is  typical.  He  was  a  pope  of 
exceedingly  broad  mind  for  his  time,  and  no  one  will  think 
him  unjustly  reckoned  one  of  the  four  Doctors  of  the  West- 
ern Church.  Yet  he  solemnly  relates  that  a  nun,  having 
eaten  some  lettuce  without  making  the  sign  of  the  cross, 
swallowed  a  devil,  and  that,  when  commanded  by  a  holy 
man  to  come  forth,  the  devil  replied  :  "  How  am  I  to  blame? 
I  was  sitting  on  the  lettuce,  and  this  woman,  not  having 
made  the  sign  of  the  cross,  ate  me  along  with  it."* 

As  a  result  of  this  idea,  the  Christian  Church  at  an  early 
period  in  its  existence  virtually  gave  up  the  noble  conquests 
of  Greek  and  Roman  science  in  this  field,  and  originated,  for 
persons  supposed  to  be  possessed,  a  regular  discipline,  de- 
veloped out  of  dogmatic  theology.  But  during  the  centu- 
ries before  theology  and  ecclesiasticism  had  become  fully 
dominant  this  discipline  was,  as  a  rule,  gentle  and  useful. 


*  For  a  striking  statement  of  the  Jewish  belief  in  diabolical  interference,  see 
Josephus,  De  Bella  Judaic o,  vii,  6,  iii  ;  also  his  Antiquities,  vol.  viii,  Whiston's 
translation.  On  the  "devil  cast  out,"  in  Mark  ix,  17-29,  as  undoubtedly  a  case  of 
epilepsy,  see  Cherullier,  Essai  sur  i ' Epilepsie  ;  also  Maury,  art.  D/moniaque  in  the 
Encyclope'die  Moderne.  In  one  text,  at  least,  the  popular  belief  is  perfectly  shown 
as  confounding  madness  and  possession  :  "  He  hath  a  devil,  and  is  mad,"  John  x, 
20.  Among  the  multitude  of  texts,  those  most  relied  upon  were  Matthew  viii,  2-, 
and  Luke  x,  17  ;  and  for  the  use  of  fetiches  in  driving  out  evil  spirits,  the  account 
of  the  cures  wrought  by  touching  the  garments  of  St.  Paul  in  Acts  xix,  12.  On  the 
general  subject,  see  authorities  already  given,  and  as  a  typical  passage  Tertullian, 
Ad.  Scap.,  ii.  For  the  very  gross  view  taken  by  St.  Basil,  see  Cudworth,  Intellectual 
System,  vol.  ii,  p.  648  ;  also  Archdeacon  Farrar's  Life  of  Christ.  For  the  case 
related  by  St.  Gregory  the  Great  with  comical  details,  see  the  Exempla  of  At  h- 
bishop  Jacques  de  Vitry,  edited  by  Prof.  T.  F.  Crane,  of  Cornell  UniverMty,  p.  5<), 
art.  exxx.  For  a  curious  presentation  of  Greek  views,  see  L£Iut,  Le  Dtfmon  de 
Socrate,  Paris,  1S56  ;  and  for  the  transmission  of  these  to  Christianity,  see  the  *ame, 
p.  201  and  following. 


I02        FROM    "DEMONIACAL    POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

The  afflicted,  when  not  too  violent,  were  generally  admitted 
to  the  exercises  of  public  worship,  and  a  kindly  system  of 
cure  was  attempted,  in  which  prominence  was  given  to  holy 
water,  sanctified  ointments,  the  breath  or  spittle  of  the  priest, 
the  touching  of  relics,  visits  to  holy  places,  and  submission 
to  mild  forms  of  exorcism.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
many  of  these  things,  when  judiciously  used  in  that  spirit  of 
love  and  gentleness  and  devotion  inherited  by  the  earlier 
disciples  from  "the  Master,"  produced  good  effects  in  sooth- 
ing  disturbed  minds  and  in  aiding  their  cure. 

Among  the  thousands  of  fetiches  of  various  sorts  then 
resorted  to  may  be  named,  as  typical,  the  Holy  Handker- 
chief of  Besancon.  During  many  centuries  multitudes  came 
from  far  and  near  to  touch  it ;  for,  it  was  argued,  if  touch- 
ing the  garments  of  St.  Paul  at  Ephesus  had  cured  the  dis- 
eased, how  much  more  might  be  expected  of  a  handkerchief 
of  the  Lord  himself ! 

With  ideas  of  this  sort  was  mingled  a  vague  belief  in 
medical  treatment,  and  out  of  this  mixture  were  evolved 
such  prescriptions  as  the  following  : 

"  If  an  elf  or  a  goblin  come,  smear  his  forehead  with  this 
salve,  put  it  on  his  eyes,  "cense  him  with  incense,  and  sign 
him  frequently  with  the  sign  of  the  cross." 

"  For  a  fiend-sick  man  :  When  a  devil  possesses  a  man,  or 
controls  him  from  within  with  disease,  a  spew-drink  of  lupin, 
bishopswort,  henbane,  garlic.  Pound  these  together,  add 
ale  and  holy  water." 

And  again :  "  A  drink  for  a  fiend-sick  man,  to  be  drunk 
out  of  a  church  bell:  Githrife,  cynoglossum,  yarrow,  lupin, 
flower-de-luce,  fennel,  lichen,  lovage.  Work  up  to  a  drink 
with  clear  ale,  sing  seven  masses  over  it,  add  garlic  and 
holy  water,  and  let  the  possessed  sing  the  Beati  Immacnlati; 
then  let  him  drink  the  dose  out  of  a  church  bell,  and  let  the 
priest  sing  over  him  the  Domine  Sancte  Pater  Omnipotens."  * 

Had  this  been  the  worst  treatment  of  lunatics  developed 
in  the  theological  atmosphere  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  world 
would  have  been  spared  some  of  the  most  terrible  chapters 

*  See  Cockayne,  Leechdoms,  Wort-cunning,  and  Star-Craft  of  Early  England, 
in  the  Rolls  Series,  vol.  ii,  p.  177  ;  also  pp.  355,  356.  For  the  great  value  of 
priestly  saliva,  see  W.  VV.  Story's  essays. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT,    i0? 

in  its  history;  but,  unfortunately,  the  idea  of  the  Satanic 
possession  of  lunatics  led  to  attempts  to  punish  the  indwell- 
ing demon.  As  this  theological  theory  and  practice  became 
more  fully  developed,  and  ecclesiasticism  more  powerful  to 
enforce  it,  all  mildness  began  to  disappear  ;  the  admonitions 
to  gentle  treatment  by  the  great  pagan  and  Moslem  physi- 
cians were  forgotten,  and  the  treatment  of  lunatics  tended 
more  and  more  toward  severity:  more  and  more  generally 
it  was  felt  that  cruelty  to  madmen  was  punishment  of  the 
devil  residing  within  or  acting  upon  them. 

A  few  strong  churchmen  and  laymen  made  efforts  to  re- 
sist this  tendency.  As  far  back  as  the  fourth  centurv,  \eme- 
sius,  Bishop  of  Emesa,  accepted  the  truth  as  developed  by 
pagan  physicians,  and  aided  them  in  strengthening  it.  In  the 
seventh  century,  a  Lombard  code  embodied  a  similar  effort. 
In  the  eighth  century,  one  of  Charlemagne's  capitularies 
seems  to  have  had  a  like  purpose.  In  the  ninth  century,  that 
great  churchman  and  statesman,  Agobard,  Archbishop  of 
Lyons,  superior  to  his  time  in  this  as  in  so  many  other  things, 
tried  to  make  right  reason  prevail  in  this  field;  and,  near 
the  beginning  of  the  tenth  century,  Regino,  Abbot  of  Priim, 
in  the  diocese  of  Treves,  insisted  on  treating  possession  as 
disease.  But  all  in  vain  ;  the  current  streaming  most  di- 
rectly from  sundry  texts  in  the  Christian  sacred  books,  and 
swollen  by  theology,  had  become  overwhelming.* 

The  first  great  tributary  poured  into  this  stream,  as  we 
approach  the  bloom  of  the  Middle  Ages,  appears  to  have 
come  from  the  brain  of  Michael  Psellus.  Mingling  scrip- 
tural texts,  Platonic  philosophy,  and  theological  statements 

*  For  a  very  thorough  and  interesting  statement  on  the  general  subject,  see 
Kirchhoff,  Beziehungen  des  Diimonen-  tind  Hexemvesens  zur  deutschen  Irrenpjlege, 
in  the  Allgemeine  Zeitschrift  filr  Psychiatrie,  Berlin,  1SS8,  Bd.  xliv,  Heft  25.  For 
Roman  Catholic  authority,  see  Addis  and  Arnold,  Catholic  Dictionary,  article 
Energumens.  For  a  brief  and  eloquent  summary,  see  Krafft-Ebing,  Lehrbuch  der 
Psychiatrie,  as  above  ;  and  for  a  clear  view  of  the  transition  from  pagan  mildness 
in  the  care  of  the  insane  to  severity  and  cruelty  under  the  Christian  Church,  see 
Maud.sley,  The  Pathology  of  Mind,  London,  1879,  p.  523.  See  also  Buchmann, 
Die  anfrcie  ttnd  die  frcie  A'irche,  Breslau,  1873,  p.  251.  For  other  citations,  see 
Kirchhoff,  as  above,  pp.  334-336.  For  Bishop  Nemesius,  see  Trilat,  p.  48.  For 
an  account  of  Agobard's  general  position  in  regard  to  this  and  allied  superstitions, 
see  Reginald  Lane  Poole's  Illustrations  of  the  History  of  Medieval  Thought,  Lon- 
don, 18S4. 


104 


FROM   "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO   INSANITY. 


by  great  doctors  of  the  Church,  with  wild  utterances  ob- 
tained from  lunatics,  he  gave  forth,  about  the  beginning  of 
the  twelfth  century,  a  treatise  on  The  Work  of  Demons.  Sa- 
cred science  was  vastly  enriched  thereby  in  various  ways ; 
but  two  of  his  conclusions,  the  results  of  his  most  pro- 
found thought,  enforced  by  theologians  and  popularized  by 
preachers,  soon  took  special  hold  upon  the  thinking  portion 
of  the  people  at  large.  The  first  of  these,  which  he  easily 
based  upon  Scripture  and  St.  Basil,  was  that,  since  all  de- 
mons suffer  by  material  fire  and  brimstone,  they  must  have 
material  bodies ;  the  second  was  that,  since  all  demons  are 
by  nature  cold,  they  gladly  seek  a  genial  warmth  by  enter- 
ing the  bodies  of  men  and  beasts.* 

Fed  by  this  stream  of  thought,  and  developed  in  the 
warm  atmosphere  of  mediaeval  devotion,  the  idea  of  demoni- 
acal possession  as  the  main  source  of  lunacy  grew  and  blos- 
somed and  bore  fruit  in  noxious  luxuriance. 

There  had,  indeed,  come  into  the  Middle  Ages  an  inherit- 
ance of  scientific  thought.  The  ideas  of  Hippocrates,  Celius 
Aurelianus,  Galen,  and  their  followers,  were  from  time  to 
time  revived  ;  the  Arabian  physicians,  the  School  of  Salerno, 
such  writers  as  Salicetus  and  Guy  de  Chauliac,  and  even 
some  of  the  religious  orders,  did  something  to  keep  scientific 
doctrines  alive ;  but  the  tide  of  theological  thought  was  too 
strong  ;  it  became  dangerous  even  to  seem  to  name  possible 
limits  to  diabolical  power.  To  deny  Satan  was  atheism  ;  and 
perhaps  nothing  did  so  much  to  fasten  the  epithet  "atheist" 
upon  the  medical  profession  as  the  suspicion  that  it  did  not 
fully  acknowledge  diabolical  interference  in  mental  disease. 
Following  in  the  lines  of  the  earlier  fathers,  St.  Anselm,  Abe- 
lard,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Vincent  of  Beauvais,  all  the  great 
doctors  in  the  mediaeval  Church,  some  of  them  in  spite  of 
occasional  misgivings,  upheld  the  idea  that  insanity  is 
largely  or  mainly  demoniacal  possession,  basing  their  belief 
steadily  on  the  sacred  Scriptures;  and  this  belief  was  fol- 
lowed up  in  every  quarter  by  more  and  more  constant  cita- 
tion of  the  text  "  Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live."     No 

*  See  Baas  and  Werner,  cited  by  Kirchhoff,  as  above  ;  also  Lecky,  Rationalism 
in  Europe,  vol.  i,  p.  68,  and  note,  New  York,  1884.  As  to  Basil's  belief  in  the 
corporeality  of  devils,  see  his  Commentary  on  Isaiah,  cap.  i. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT.    I0- 

other  text  of  Scripture — save  perhaps  one — has  caused  the 
shedding  of  so  much  innocent  blood. 

As  we  look  over  the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  we  do, 
indeed,  see  another  growth  from  which  one  might  hope 
much  ;  for  there  were  two  great  streams  of  influence  in  the 
Church,  and  never  were  two  powers  more  unlike  each 
other. 

On  one  side  was  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  as  it  proceeded 
from  the  heart  and  mind  of  its  blessed  Founder,  immensely 
powerful  in  aiding  the  evolution  of  religious  thought  and 
effort,  and  especially  of  provision  for  the  relief  of  suffer- 
ing by  religious  asylums  and  tender  care.  Nothing  better 
expresses  this  than  the  touching  words  inscribed  upon  a 
great  mediaeval  hospital,  "  Christo  in  pauperibus  sin's."  But 
on  the  other  side  was  the  theological  theory — proceeding, 
as  we  have  seen,  from  the  survival  of  ancient  supersti- 
tions, and  sustained  by  constant  reference  to  the  texts  in 
our  sacred  books — that  many,  and  probably  most,  of  the 
insane  were  possessed  by  the  devil  or  in  league  with  him, 
and  that  the  cruel  treatment  of  lunatics  was  simply  punish- 
ment of  the  devil  and  his  minions.  By  this  current  of 
thought  was  gradually  developed  one  of  the  greatest 
masses  of  superstitious  cruelty  that  has  ever  afflicted  human- 
ity. At  the  same  time  the  stream  of  Christian  endeavour, 
so  far  as  the  insane  were  concerned,  was  almost  entirely  cut 
off.  In  all  the  beautiful  provision  during  the  Middle  Ages 
for  the  alleviation  of  human  suffering,  there  was  for  the  in- 
sane almost  no  care.  Some  monasteries,  indeed,  gave  them 
refuge.  We  hear  of  a  charitable  work  done  for  them  at 
the  London  Bethlehem  Hospital  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
at  Geneva  in  the  fifteenth,  at  Marseilles  in  the  sixteenth,  by 
the  Black  Penitents  in  the  south  of  France,  by  certain  Fran- 
ciscans in  northern  France,  by  the  Alexian  Brothers  on  the 
Rhine,  and  by  various  agencies  in  other  parts  of  Europe  ;  but, 
curiously  enough,  the  only  really  important  effort  in  the 
Christian  Church  was  stimulated  by  the  Mohammedans. 
Certain  monks,  who  had  much  to  do  with  them  in  redeem- 
ing Christian  slaves,  found  in  the  fifteenth  century  what 
John  Howard  found  in  the  eighteenth,  that  the  Arabs  and 
Turks  made  a  large  and  merciful  provision  for  lunatics,  such 


io6       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO   INSANITY. 

as  was  not  seen  in  Christian  lands ;  and  this  example  led  to 
better  establishments  in  Spain  and  Italy. 

All  honour  to  this  work  and  to  the  men  who  ensfaered  in 
it ;  but,  as  a  rule,  these  establishments  were  few  and  poor, 
compared  with  those  for  other  diseases,  and  they  usually  de- 
generated into  "mad-houses,"  where  devils  were  cast  out 
mainly  by  cruelty.* 

The  first  main  weapon  against  the  indwelling  Satan  con- 
tinued to  be  the  exorcism  ;  but  under  the  influence  of  infer- 
ences from  Scripture  farther  and  farther  fetched,  and  of 
theological  reasoning  more  and  more  subtle,  it  became  some- 
thing very  different  from  the  gentle  procedure  of  earlier 
times,  and  some  description  of  this  great  weapon  at  the  time 
of  its  highest  development  will  throw  light  on  the  laws  which 
govern  the  growth  of  theological  reasoning,  as  well  as  upon 
the  main  subject  in  hand. 

A  fundamental  premise  in  the  fully  developed  exorcism 
was  that,  according  to  sacred  Scripture,  a  main  characteris- 
tic of  Satan  is  pride.  Pride  led  him  to  rebel  ;  for  pride  he 
was  cast  down  ;  therefore  the  first  thing  to  do,  in  driving 
him  out  of  a  lunatic,  was  to  strike  a  fatal  blow  at  his  pride, — 
to  disgust  him. 

This  theory  was  carried  out  logically,  to  the  letter.  The 
treatises  on  the  subject  simply  astound  one  by  their  wealth 
of  blasphemous  and  obscene  epithets  which  it  was  allowable 
for  the  exorcist  to  use  in  casting  out  devils.  The  Treasury 
of  Exorcisms  contains  hundreds  of  pages  packed  with  the 
vilest  epithets  which  the  worst  imagination  could  invent  for 
the  purpose  of  overwhelming  the  indwelling  Satan. f 

*  For  a  very  full  and  learned,  if  somewhat  one-sided,  account  of  the  earlier 
effects  of  this  stream  of  charitable  thought,  see  Tollemer,  Des  Origines  de  la  Cha- 
rite"  Catholique,  Paris,  1858.  It  is  instructive  to  note  that,  while  this  book  is  very 
full  in  regard  to  the  action  of  the  Church  on  slavery  and  on  provision  for  the 
widows  and  orphans,  the  sick,  the  infirm,  captives,  and  lepers,  there  is  hardly  a  trace 
of  any  care  for  the  insane.  This  same  want  is  incidentally  shown  by  a  typical  ex- 
ample in  Kriegk,  Aerzte,  Heilanstaltcn  und  Geisteskranke  im  mittelalterlichen  Frank- 
furt, Ftankfurt  a.  M.,  1863,  pp.  16,  17  ;  also  Kirchhoff,  pp.  396,  397.  On  the  general 
subject,  see  Semelaigne,  as  above,  p.  214  ;  also  Calmed,  vol.  i,  pp.  116,  117.  F"or  the 
effect  of  Moslem  example  in  Spain  and  Italy,  see  Krafft-Ebing,  as  above,  p.  45,  note. 

f  Thesaurus  Exorcismortim  atque  Conjurationum  terribilium,  potentissitnorutn% 
efficacissimorum,  cum  Practica  probatissima  :  quibus  spiritus  maligni,  Dcemones 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT.    I0~ 

Some  of  those  decent  enough  to  be  printed  in  these  de- 
generate days  ran  as  follows: 

"Thou  lustful  and  stupid  one,  .  .  .  thou  lean  sow,  famine- 
stricken  and  most  impure,  .  .  .  thou  wrinkled  beast,  thou 
mangy  beast,  thou  beast  of  all  beasts  the  most  beastly,  .  .  . 
thou  mad  spirit,  .  .  .  thou  bestial  and  foolish  drunkard,  .  .  . 
most  greedy  wolf,  .  .  .  most  abominable  whisperer,  .  .  . 
thou  sooty  spirit  from  Tartarus!  ...  I  cast  thee  down,  () 
Tartarean  boor,  into  the  infernal  kitchen !  .  .  .  Loathsome 
cobbler,  .  .  .  dingy  collier,  .  .  .  filthy  sow  {scrofa  stercorata), 
.  .  .  perfidious  boar,  .  .  .  envious  crocodile,  .  .  .  malodor- 
ous drudge,  .  .  .  wounded  basilisk,  .  .  .  rust-coloured  asp, 
.  .  .  swollen  toad,  .  .  .  entangled  spider,  .  .  .  lousy  swine- 
herd (porcariv pedicose),  .  .  .  lowest  of  the  low,  .  .  .  cudgelled 
ass,"  etc. 

But,  in  addition  to  this  attempt  to  disgust  Satan's  pride 
with  blackguardism,  there  was  another  to  scare  him  with 
tremendous  words.  For  this  purpose,  thunderous  names, 
from  Hebrew  and  Greek,  were  imported,  such  as  Acharon, 
Eheye,  Schemhamphora,  Tetragrammaton,  Homoousion, 
Athanatos,  Ischiros,  ^Ecodes,  and  the  like.* 

Efforts  were  also  made  to  drive  him  out  with  filthy 
and  rank-smelling  drugs ;  and,  among  those  which  can  be 
mentioned  in  a  printed  article,  we  may  name  asafcetida, 
sulphur,  squills,  etc.,  which  were  to  be  burned  under  his 
nose. 

Still  further  to  plague  him,  pictures  of  the  devil  were  to 
be  spat  upon,  trampled  under  foot  by  people  of  low  condi- 
tion, and  sprinkled  with  foul  compounds. 

But  these   were    merely   preliminaries    to  the   exorcism 

Maleficiaque  omnia  de  Corporibus  humanis  obsessis,  tanquam  Flagellis  Fustibusque 
fugantur,  expclluntur,  .  .  .  Cologne,  1626.  Many  of  the  books  of  the  exorcists 
were  put  upon  the  various  indexes  of  the  Church,  hut  this,  the  richest  collection  of 
all,  and  including  nearly  all  those  condemned,  was  not  prohibited  until  17 og 
Scarcely  less  startling  manuals  continued  even  later  in  use  ;  and  exorcisms  adapted 
to  every  emergency  may  of  course  still  be  found  in  all  the  Benedictionals  of  the 
Church,  even  the  latest.  As  an  example,  see  the  Manual*  BenedicHonum  published 
by  the  Bishop  of  Passau  in  1849,  or  the  Exorcismus  in  Satanam,  etc.,  issued  in 
1S90  by  the  present  Pope,  and  now  on  sale  at  the  shop  of  the  Propaganda  in  Rome. 
*  See  the  Conjuratio  on  p.  300  of  the  Thesaurus,  and  the  general  directions 
given  on  pp.  251,  252. 


IOS       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO    INSANITY. 

proper.  In  this  the  most  profound  theological  thought  and 
sacred  science  of  the  period  culminated. 

Most  of  its  forms  were  childish,  but  some  rise  to  almost 
Miltonic  grandeur.  As  an  example  of  the  latter,  we  may 
take  the  following : 

"  By  the  Apocalypse  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  God  hath 
given  to  make  known  unto  his  servants  those  things  which 
are  shortly  to  be ;  and  hath  signified,  sending  by  his  angel, 
...  I  exorcise  you,  ye  angels  of  untold  perversity  ! 

"  By  the  seven  golden  candlesticks,  .  .  .  and  by  one  like 
unto  the  Son  of  man,  standing  in  the  midst  of  the  candle- 
sticks ;  by  his  voice,  as  the  voice  of  many  waters ;  ...  by 
his  words,  '  I  am  living,  who  was  dead ;  and  behold,  I  live 
forever  and  ever ;  and  I  have  the  keys  of  death  and  of  hell,' 
I  say  unto  you,  Depart,  O  angels  that  show  the  way  to 
eternal  perdition  !  " 

Besides  these,  were  long  litanies  of  billingsgate,  cursing, 
and  threatening.  One  of  these  "  scourging  "  exorcisms  runs 
partly  as  follows : 

"  May  Agyos  strike  thee,  as  he  did  Egypt,  with  frogs ! 
.  .  .  May  all  the  devils  that  are  thy  foes  rush  forth  upon  thee, 
and  drag  thee  down  to  hell!  .  .  .  May  .  .  .  Tetragramma- 
ton  .  .  .  drive  thee  forth  and  stone  thee,  as  Israel  did  to 
Achan  !  .  .  .  May  the  Holy  One  trample  on  thee  and  hang 
thee  up  in  an  infernal  fork,  as  was  done  to  the  five  kings 
of  the  Amorites !  .  .  .  May  God  set  a  nail  to  your  skull,  and 
pound  it  in  with  a  hammer,  as  Jael  did  unto  Sisera !  .  .  .  May 
.  .  .  Sother  .  .  .  break  thy  head  and  cut  off  thy  hands,  as  was 
done  to  the  cursed  Dagon  !  .  .  .  May  God  hang  thee  in  a 
hellish  yoke,  as  seven  men  were  hanged  by  the  sons  of  Saul !  " 
And  so  on,  through  five  pages  of  close-printed  Latin  curses.* 

Occasionally  the  demon  is  reasoned  with,  as  follows:  "O 
obstinate,  accitrsed,  fly  !  .  .  .  why  do  you  stop  and  hold  back, 
when  you  know  that  your  strength  is  lost  on  Christ?  For  it 
is  hard  for  thee  to  kick  against  the  pricks ;  and,  verily,  the 
longer  it  takes  you  to  go,  the  worse  it  will  go  with  you. 
Begone,  then  :  take  flight,  thou  venomous  hisser,  thou  lying 
worm,  thou  begetter  of  vipers  !  "  f 

*  T/iesaurus  Exorcismorum,  pp.  812-817.  t  Ibid.,  p.  859. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT.    IOq 

This  procedure  and  its  results  were  recognised  as  among 
the  glories  of  the  Church.  As  typical,  we  may  mention  an 
exorcism  directed  by  a  certain  Bishop  of  Beauvais,  which 
was  so  effective  that  five  devils  gave  up  possession  of  a  suf- 
ferer and  signed  their  names,  each  for  himself  and  his  sub- 
ordinate imps,  to  an  agreement  that  the  possessed  should  be 
molested  no  more.  So,  too,  the  Jesuit  fathers  at  Vienna,  in 
1583,  gloried  in  the  fact  that  in  such  a  contest  they  had  cast 
out  twelve  thousand  six  hundred  and  fifty-two  living  devils. 
The  ecclesiastical  annals  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and,  indeed,  of 
a  later  period,  abound  in  boasts  of  such  "  mighty  works."* 

Such  was  the  result  of  a  thousand  years  of  theological 
reasoning,  by  the  strongest  minds  in  Europe,  upon  data 
partly  given  in  Scripture  and  partly  inherited  from  pagan- 
ism, regarding  Satan  and  his  work  among  men. 

Under  the  guidance  of  theology,  always  so  severe  against 
"science  falsely  so  called,"  the  world  had  come  a  long  way 
indeed  from  the  soothing  treatment  of  the  possessed  by  him 
who  bore  among  the  noblest  of  his  titles  that  of  "  The  Great 
Physician."  The  result  was  natural :  the  treatment  of  the 
insane  fell  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of  the  jailer,  the 
torturer,  and  the  executioner. 

To  go  back  for  a  moment  to  the  beginnings  of  this  un- 
fortunate development.  In  spite  of  the  earlier  and  more 
kindly  tendency  in  the  Church,  the  Synod  of  Ancyra,  as 
early  as  314  A.  D.,  commanded  the  expulsion  of  possessed 
persons  from  the  Church  ;  the  Visigothic  Christians  whipped 
them  ;  and  Charlemagne,  in  spite  of  some  good  enactments, 
imprisoned  them.  Men  and  women,  whose  distempered 
minds  might  have  been  restored  to  health  by  gentleness  and 
skill,  were  driven  into  hopeless  madness  by  noxious  medi- 
cines and  brutality.  Some  few  were  saved  as  mere  lunatics 
— they  were  surrendered  to  general  carelessness,  and  became 


*  In  my  previous  chapters,  especially  that  on  meteorology,  I  have  quoted  ex- 
tensively from  the  original  treatises,  of  which  a  very  large  collection  is  in  ni\  po  - 
session;  but  in  this  chapter  I  have  mainly  availed  myself  of  the  copious  transla- 
tions given  by  M.  II.  Dziewicki,  in  his  excellent  article  in  The  Nineteenth  Century 
for  October,  1SS8,  entitled  Exorrizo  Te.  For  valuable  citations  on  the  origin  and 
spread  of  exorcism,  see  Lecky's  Europe  in  Morals  (third  English  edition),  vol.  i, 
PP-  379-335- 


HO       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

simply  a  prey  to  ridicule  and  aimless  brutality;  but  vast 
numbers  were  punished  as  tabernacles  of  Satan. 

One  of  the  least  terrible  of  these  punishments,  and  per- 
haps the  most  common  of  all,  was  that  of  scourging  demons 
out  of  the  body  of  a  lunatic.  This  method  commended  itself 
even  to  the  judgment  of  so  thoughtful  and  kindly  a  person- 
age as  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  as  late  as  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. But  if  the  disease  continued,  as  it  naturally  would 
after  such  treatment,  the  authorities  frequently  felt  justified 
in  driving  out  the  demons  by  torture.* 

Interesting  monuments  of  this  idea,  so  fruitful  in  evil, 
still  exist.  In  the  great  cities  of  central  Europe,  "  witch 
towers,"  where  witches  and  demoniacs  were  tortured,  and 
"  fool  towers,"  where  the  more  gentle  lunatics  were  im- 
prisoned, may  still  be  seen. 

In  the  cathedrals  we  still  see  this  idea  fossilized.  Devils 
and  imps,  struck  into  stone,  clamber  upon  towers,  prowl 
under  cornices,  peer  out  from  bosses  of  foliage,  perch  upon 
capitals,  nestle  under  benches,  flame  in  windows.  Above  the 
great  main  entrance,  the  most  common  of  all  representations 
still  shows  Satan  and  his  imps  scowling,  jeering,  grinning, 
while  taking  possession  of  the  souls  of  men  and  scourging 
them  with  serpents,  or  driving  them  with  tridents,  or  drag- 
ging them  with  chains  into  the  flaming  mouth  of  hell.  Even 
in  the  most  hidden  and  sacred  places  of  the  mediaeval  cathe- 
dral we  still  find  representations  of  Satanic  power  in  which 
profanity  and  obscenity  run  riot.  In  these  representations 
the  painter  and  the  glass-stainer  vied  with  the  sculptor. 
Among  the  early  paintings  on  canvas  a  well-known  example 
represents  the  devil  in  the  shape  of  a  dragon,  perched  near 
the  head  of  a  dying  man,  eager  to  seize  his  soul  as  it  issues 
from  his  mouth,  and  only  kept  off  by  the  efforts  of  the  attend- 
ant priest.  Typical  are  the  colossal  portrait  of  Satan,  and 
the  vivid  picture  of  the  devils  cast  out  of  the  possessed  and 
entering  into  the  swine,  as  shown  in  the  cathedral-windows 
of  Strasburg.  So,  too,  in  the  windows  of  Chartres  Cathe- 
dral we  see  a  saint  healing  a  lunatic :  the  saint,  with  a  long 


*  For  prescription  of  the  whipping-post  by  Sir  Thomas  More,  see  D.  H.  Tuke's 
History  of  Insanity  in  the  British  Isles,  London,  1882,  p.  41. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS    IKl.A  I  \ll  X  I  .    i  i  i 

devil-scaring  formula  in  Latin  issuing  from  his  mouth  ;  and 
the  lunatic,  with  a  little  detestable  hobgoblin,  horned,  hoofed, 
and  tailed,  issuing  from  his  mouth.  These  examples  are  but 
typical  of  myriads  in  cathedrals  and  abbeys  and  parish 
churches  throughout  Europe;  and  all  served  to  impress 
upon  the  popular  mind  a  horror  ot  everything  called  dia- 
bolic, and  a  hatred  of  those  charged  with  it.  These  sermons 
in  stones  preceded  the  printed  book;  they  were  a  sculptured 
Bible,  which  preceded  Luther's  pictorial  Bible.* 

Satan  and  his  imps  were  among  the  principal  personages 
in  every  popular  drama,  and  "  Hell's  Mouth  "  was  a  piece  of 
stage  scenery  constantly  brought  into  requisition.  A  mira- 
cle-play without  a  full  display  of  the  diabolic  element  in 
it  would  have  stood  a  fair  chance  of  being  pelted  from  the 
stage. f 

Not  only  the  popular  art  but  the  popular  legends  em- 
bodied these  ideas.  The  chroniclers  delighted  in  them  ;  the 
Lives  of  the  Saints  abounded  in  them  ;  sermons  enforced 
them  from  every  pulpit.  What  wonder,  then,  that  men  and 
women  had  vivid  dreams  of  Satanic  influence,  that  dread 


*  I  cite  these  instances  out  of  a  vast  number  which  I  have  personally  noted  in 
visits  to  various  cathedrals.  For  striking  examples  of  mediaeval  grotesque 
Wright's  History  of  Caricature  and  the  Grotesque,  London,  1875  ;  Langlois's  Stalles 
de  la  Cathddrale  de  Rouen,  1838  ;  Adeline's  Les  Sculptures  Grotesques  et  Svm- 
botiques,  Rouen,  1S78  ;  Viollet  le  Due,  Dictionnaire  de  T Architecture  ;  Gailhabaud, 
Sur  1  Architecture,  etc.  For  a  reproduction  of  an  illuminated  manuscript  in  which 
devils  fly  out  of  the  mouths  of  the  possessed  under  the  influence  of  exorcisms,  see 
Cahier  and  Martin,  Nouveaux  Melanges  d' Archeologie  for  1874,  p.  136  ;  and  for  a 
demon  emerging  from  a  victim's  mouth  in  a  puff  of  smoke  at  the  command  of  St. 
Francis  Xavier,  see  La  Devotion  de  Dix  Vendredis,  etc.,  Plate  xxxii. 

f  See  Wright,  History  of  Caricature  and  the  Grotesque;  F.  J.  Mone,  Schauspiele 
des  Mittelalters,  Carlsruhe,  1S46  ;  Dr.  Karl  Hase,  Miracle-Plays  and  Sacred  Dramas, 
Boston,  1880  (translation  from  the  German).  Examples  of  the  miracle-plays  may 
be  found  in  Marriott's  Collection  of  English  Miracle-Plays,  1838 ;  in  Hone's 
Ancient  Mysteries ;  in  T.  Sharpe's  Dissertation  on  the  Pageants  .  .  .  anciently  per- 
formed at  Coventry,  Coventry,  1828  ;  in  the  publication^  of  the  Shakespearean  and 
other  societies.  See  especially  The  Harrowing  of  Hell,  a  miracle-play,  edited  from 
the  original  now  in  the  British  Museum,  by  T.  O.  Halliwcll,  London,  1840.  One 
of  the  items  still  preserved  is  a  sum  of  money  paid  for  keeping  a  fire  burning  in 
hell's  mouth.  Says  Hase  (as  above,  p.  42):  "In  wonderful  satyrlike  masquerade, 
in  which  neither  horns,  tail,  nor  hoofs  were  ever  .  .  .  wanting,  the  devil  prosecuted 
on  the  stage  his  business  of  fetching  souls,"  which  left  the  mouths  of  the  dying  "in 
the  form  of  small  images." 


H2       FROM   "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO    INSANITY. 

of  it  was  like  dread  of  the  plague,  and  that  this  terror  spread 
the  disease  enormously,  until  we  hear  of  convents,  villages, 
and  even  large  districts,  ravaged  by  epidemics  of  diabolical 
possession  !  * 

And  this  terror  naturally  bred  not  only  active  cruelty 
toward  those  supposed  to  be  possessed,  but  indifference  to 
the  sufferings  of  those  acknowledged  to  be  lunatics.  As  we 
have  already  seen,  while  ample  and  beautiful  provision  was 
made  for  every  other  form  of  human  suffering,  for  this  there 
was  comparatively  little  ;  and,  indeed,  even  this  little  was 
generally  worse  than  none.  Of  this  indifference  and  cruelty 
we  have  a  striking  monument  in  a  single  English  word — 
a  word  originally  significant  of  gentleness  and  mercy,  but 
which  became  significant  of  wild  riot,  brutality,  and  confu- 
sion—  Bethlehem  Hospital  became  "  Bedlam." 

Modern  art  has  also  dwelt  upon  this  theme,  and  perhaps 
the  most  touching  of  all  its  exhibitions  is  the  picture  by  a 
great  French  master,  representing  a  tender  woman  bound  to 
a  column  and  exposed  to  the  jeers,  insults,  and  missiles  of 
street  ruffians. f 

Here  and  there,  even  in  the  worst  of  times,  men  arose 
who  attempted  to  promote  a  more  humane  view,  but  with 
little  effect.  One  expositor  of  St.  Matthew,  having  ven- 
tured to  recall  the  fact  that  some  of  the  insane  were 
spoken  of  in  the  New  Testament  as  lunatics  and  to  sug- 
gest that  their  madness  might  be  caused  by  the  moon,  was 
answered  that  their  madness  was  not  caused  by  the  moon, 
but  by  the  devil,  who  avails  himself  of  the  moonlight  for  his 
work.  ^ 

One  result  of  this  idea  was  a  mode  of  cure  which  espe- 
cially aggravated  and  spread  mental  disease :  the  promotion 
of  great  religious  processions.  Troops  of  men  and  women, 
crying,  howling,  imploring  saints,  and  beating  themselves 
with    whips,    visited    various    sacred    shrines,    images,    and 

*  I  shall  discuss  these  epidemics  of  possession,  which  form  a  somewhat  distinct 
class  of  phenomena,  in  the  next  chapter. 

•(-  The  typical  picture  representing  a  priest's  struggle  with  the  devil  is  in  the  city 
gallery  of  Rouen.  The  modern  picture  is  Robert  Fleury's  painting  in  the  Luxem- 
bourg Gallery  at  Paris. 

%  See  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  cited  by  Tuke,  as  above,  pp.  8,  9. 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS   TREATMENT.   113 

places  in  the  hope  of  driving  off  the  powers  of  evil.  The 
only  result  was  an  increase  in  the  numbers  oi  the  diseased. 

For  hundreds  of  years  this  idea  of  diabolic  possession 
was  steadily  developed.  It  was  believed  that  devils  entered 
into  animals,  and  animals  were  accordingly  exorcised,  tried, 
tortured,  convicted,  and  executed.  The  great  St.  Ambrose 
tells  us  that  a  priest,  while  saying  mass,  was  troubled  by  the 
croaking  of  frogs  in  a  neighbouring  marsh  ;  that  he  exorcised 
them,  and  so  stopped  their  noise.  St.  Bernard,  as  the  monk- 
ish chroniclers  tell  us,  mounting  the  pulpit  to  preach  in  his 
abbey,  was  interrupted  by  a  cloud  of  flies;  straightway  the 
saint  uttered  the  sacred  formula  of  excommunication,  when 
the  flies  fell  dead  upon  the  pavement  in  heaps,  and  were  cast 
out  with  shovels !  A  formula  of  exorcism  attributed  to  a 
saint  of  the  ninth  century,  which  remained  in  use  down  to  a 
recent  period,  especiallv  declares  insects  injurious  to  crops 
to  be  possessed  of  evil  spirits,  and  names,  among  the  animals 
to  be  excommunicated  or  exorcised,  mice,  moles,  and  ser- 
pents. The  use  of  exorcism  against  caterpillars  and  grass- 
hoppers was  also  common.  In  the  thirteenth  century  a 
Bishop  of  Lausanne,  finding  that  the  eels  in  Lake  Leman 
troubled  the  fishermen,  attempted  to  remove  the  difficulty 
by  exorcism,  and  two  centuries  later  one  of  his  successors 
excommunicated  all  the  May-bugs  in  the  diocese.  As  late 
as  1 73 1  there  appears  an  entry  on  the  Municipal  Register  of 
Thonon  as  follows:  "  Resolved,  That  this  town  join  with  other 
parishes  of  this  province  in  obtaining  from  Rome  an  excom- 
munication against  the  insects,  and  that  it  will  contribute //v 
rata  to  the  expenses  of  the  same." 

Did  any  one  venture  to  deny  that  animals  could  be  pos- 
sessed by  Satan,  he  was  at  once  silenced  by  reference  to  the 
entrance  of  Satan  into  the  serpent  in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and 
to  the  casting  of  devils  into  swine  by  the  Founder  of  Chris- 
tianity himself.* 

One  part  of  this  superstition  most  tenaciously  held  was 
the  belief  that  a  human  being  could  be  transformed  into  one 

*  See  Menabrea,  Proces  an  Moyen  Age  contre  les  Animaux,  Chamb&y,  i-j'1. 
pp.  31  and  following  ;  also  Dcsmazes,  Supplices,  Prisons  et  Grace  en  France,  pp. 

89.  go,  and  385-395.     For  a  formula  and  ceremonies  used  in  excommunicating  in- 
sects, see  Rydberg,  pp.  75  and  following. 
36 


ii4 


FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO   INSANITY. 


of  the  lower  animals.  This  became  a  fundamental  point. 
The  most  dreaded  of  predatory  animals  in  the  Middle  Ages 
were  the  wolves.  Driven  from  the  hills  and  forests  in  the 
winter  by  hunger,  they  not  only  devoured  the  flocks,  but 
sometimes  came  into  the  villages  and  seized  children.  From 
time  to  time  men  and  women  whose  brains  were  disordered 
dreamed  that  they  had  been  changed  into  various  animals, 
and  especially  into  wolves.  On  their  confessing  this,  and 
often  implicating  others,  many  executions  of  lunatics  re- 
sulted ;  moreover,  countless  sane  victims,  suspected  of  the 
same  impossible  crime,  were  forced  by  torture  to  confess  it, 
and  sent  unpitied  to  the  stake.  The  belief  in  such  a  trans- 
formation pervaded  all  Europe,  and  lasted  long  even  in 
Protestant  countries.  Probably  no  article  in  the  witch  creed 
had  more  adherents  in  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  than  this.  Nearly  every  parish  in  Europe 
had  its  resultant  horrors. 

The  reformed  Church  in  all  its  branches  fully  accepted 
the  doctrines  of  witchcraft  and  diabolic  possession,  and  de- 
veloped them  still  further.  No  one  urged  their  fundamental 
ideas  more  fully  than  Luther.  He  did,  indeed,  reject  por- 
tions of  the  witchcraft  folly  ;  but  to  the  influence  of  devils 
he  not  only  attributed  his  maladies,  but  his  dreams,  and 
nearly  everything  that  thwarted  or  disturbed  him.  The 
flies  which  lighted  upon  his  book,  the  rats  which  kept  him 
awake  at  night,  he  believed  to  be  devils  ;  the  resistance  of 
the  Archbishop  of  Mayence  to  his  ideas,  he  attributed  to 
Satan  literally  working  in  that  prelate's  heart ;  to  his  disci- 
ples he  told  stories  of  men  who  had  been  killed  by  rashly 
resisting  the  devil.  Insanity,  he  was  quite  sure,  was  caused 
by  Satan,  and  he  exorcised  sufferers.  Against  some  he  ap- 
pears to  have  advised  stronger  remedies;  and  his  horror 
of  idiocy,  as  resulting  from  Satanic  influence,  was  so  great, 
that  on  one  occasion  he  appears  to  have  advised  the  killing 
of  an  idiot  child,  as  being  the  direct  offspring  of  Satan.  Yet 
Luther  was  one  of  the  most  tender  and  loving  of  men  ;  in 
the  whole  range  of  literature  there  is  hardly  anything  more 
touching  than  his  words  and  tributes  to  children.  In  en- 
forcing  his  ideas  regarding  insanity,  he  laid  stress  especially 
upon  the  question  of  St.  Paul  as  to  the  bewitching  of  the 


THEOLOGICAL  IDEAS  OF  LUNACY  AND  ITS  TREATMENT,    [jj 

Galatians,  and,  regarding  idiocy,  on  the  account  in  Genesis 
of  the  birth  of  children  whose  fathers  were  "  sons  of  God  " 
and  whose  mothers  were  "  daughters  of  men." 

One  idea  of  his  was  especially  characteristic.  The  de- 
scent of  Christ  into  hell  was  a  frequent  topic  of  discussion 
in  the  Reformed  Church.  Melanchthon,  with  his  love  of 
Greek  studies,  held  that  the  purpose  of  the  Saviour  in  mak- 
ing such  a  descent  was  to  make  himself  known  to  the  great 
and  noble  men  of  antiquity — Plato,  Socrates,  and  the  rest; 
but  Luther  insisted  that  his  purpose  was  to  conquer  Satan 
in  a  hand-to-hand  struggle. 

This  idea  of  diabolic  influence  pervaded  his  conversation, 
his  preaching,  his  writings,  and  spread  thence  to  the  Lu- 
theran Church  in  general. 

Calvin  also  held  to  the  same  theory,  and,  having  more 
power  with  less  kindness  of  heart  than  Luther,  carried  it 
out  with  yet  greater  harshness.  Beza  was  especially  severe 
against  those  who  believed  insanity  to  be  a  natural  malady, 
and  declared,  "  Such  persons  are  refuted  both  by  sacred  and 
profane  history." 

Under  the  influence,  then,  of  such  infallible  teachings,  in 
the  older  Church  and  in  the  new,  this  superstition  was  devel- 
oped more  and  more  into  cruelty ;  and  as  the  biblical  texts, 
popularized  in  the  sculptures  and  windows  and  mural  deco- 
rations of  the  great  mediaeval  cathedrals,  had  done  much  to 
develop  it  among  the  people,  so  Luther's  translation  of  the 
Bible,  especially  in  the  numerous  editions  of  it  illustrated 
with  engravings,  wrought  with  enormous  power  to  spread 
and  deepen  it.  In  every  peasant's  cottage  some  one  could 
spell  out  the  story  of  the  devil  bearing  Christ  through  the 
air  and  placing  him  upon  the  pinnacle  of  the  Temple — of  the 
woman  with  seven  devils — of  the  devils  cast  into  the  swine. 
Every  peasant's  child  could  be  made  to  understand  the 
quaint  pictures  in  the  family  Bible  or  the  catechism  which 
illustrated  vividly  all  those  texts.  In  the  ideas  thus  deeply 
implanted,  the  men  who  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  struggled  against  this  mass  of  folly  and  cruelty 
found  the  worst  barrier  to  right  reason.* 

*  For  Luther,  see,  among  the  vast  number  of  similar  passages  in  his  works,  the 


H6       FROM   "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"    TO   INSANITY. 

Such  was  the  treatment  of  demoniacs  developed  by  the- 
ology, and  such  the  practice  enforced  by  ecclesiasticism  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years. 

How  an  atmosphere  was  spread  in  which  this  belief  be- 
gan to  dissolve  away,  how  its  main  foundations  were  under- 
mined by  science,  and  how  there  came  in  gradually  a  reign 
of  humanity,  will  now  be  related. 


II.   BEGINNINGS   OF   A   HEALTHFUL   SCEPTICISM. 

We  have  now  seen  the  culmination  of  the  old  procedure 
regarding  insanity,  as  it  was  developed  under  theology  and 
enforced  by  ecclesiasticism  ;  and  we  have  noted  how,  under 
the  influence  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  the  Reformation  rather 
deepened  than  weakened  the  faith  in  the  malice  and  power 
of  a  personal  devil.  Nor  was  this,  in  the  Reformed  churches 
any  more  than  in  the  old,  mere  matter  of  theory.  As  in  the 
early  ages  of  Christianity,  its  priests  especially  appealed,  in 
proof  of  the  divine  mission,  to  their  power  over  the  enemy 
of  mankind  in  the  bodies  of  men,  so  now  the  clergy  of  the 
rival  creeds  eagerly  sought  opportunities  to  establish  the 
truth  of  their  own  and  the  falsehood  of  their  opponents' 
doctrines  by  the  visible  casting  out  of  devils.  True,  their 
methods  differed  somewhat :  where  the  Catholic  used  holy 
water  and  consecrated  wax,  the  Protestant  was  content  with 
texts  of  Scripture  and  importunate  prayer;  but  the  supple- 
mentary physical  annoyance  of  the  indwelling  demon  did 
not  greatly  vary.  Sharp  was  the  competition  for  the  un- 
happy objects  of  treatment.  Each  side,  of  course,  stoutly 
denied  all  efficacy  to  its  adversaries'  efforts,  urging  that  any 
seeming  victory  over  Satan  was  due  not  to  the  defeat  but  to 
the  collusion  of  the  fiend.  As,  according  to  the  Master  him- 
self, "  no  man  can  by  Beelzebub  cast  out  devils,"  the  patient 
was  now  in  greater  need  of   relief  than  before;  and  more 


Table  Talk,  Hazlitt's  translation,  pp.  251,  252.  As  to  the  grotesques  in  mediaeval 
churches,  the  writer  of  this  article,  in  visiting  the  town  church  of  Wittenberg,  no- 
ticed, just  opposite  the  pulpit  where  Luther  so  often  preached,  a  very  spirited  figure 
of  an  imp  peering  out  upon  the  congregation.  One  can  but  suspect  that  this 
medieval  survival  frequently  suggested  Luther's  favourite  topic  during  his  sermons. 
For  Beza,  see  his  ATotes  on  the  New  Testament,  Matthew  iv,  24. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   A   HEALTHFUL   SCEPTICISM.  n- 

than  one  poor  victim  had  to  bear  alternately  Lutheran,  Ro- 
man, and  perhaps  Calvinistic  exorcism.* 

But  far  more  serious  in  its  consequences  was  another 
rivalry  to  which  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  clergy  of  all 
creeds  found  themselves  subject.  The  revival  of  the  science 
of  medicine,  under  the  impulse  of  the  new  study  of  antiquity, 
suddenly  bade  fair  to  take  out  of  the  hands  of  the  Church 
the  profession  of  which  she  had  enjoyed  so  long  and  so 
profitable  a  monopoly.  Only  one  class  of  diseases  remained 
unquestionably  hers — those  which  were  still  admitted  to  be 
due  to  the  direct  personal  interference  of  Satan — and  fore- 
most among  these  was  insanity .f  It  was  surely  no  wonder 
that  an  age  of  religious  controversy  and  excitement  should 
be  exceptionally  prolific  in  ailments  of  the  mind  ;  and,  to 
men  who  mutually  taught  the  utter  futility  of  that  baptismal 
exorcism  by  which  the  babes  of  their  misguided  neighbours 
were  made  to  renounce  the  devil  and  his  works,  it  ought  not 
to  have  seemed  strange  that  his  victims  now  became  more 
numerous.:}:  But  so  simple  an  explanation  did  not  satisfy 
these  physicians  of  souls ;  they  therefore  devised  a  simpler 
one:  their  patients,  they  alleged,  were  bewitched,  and  their 
increase  was  due  to  the  growing  numbers  of  those  human 
allies  of  Satan  known  as  witches. 

Already,  before  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Pope 
Innocent  VIII  had  issued  the  startling  bull  by  which  he 
called  on  the  archbishops,  bishops,  and  other  clergy  of  Ger- 
many to  join  hands  with  his  inquisitors  in  rooting  out  these 
willing  bond-servants  of  Satan,  who  were  said  to  swarm 
throughout  all  that  country   and    to   revel  in  the   blackest 


*  For  instances  of  this  competition,  see  Freytag,  Aus  dem  Jahrh.  d.  Reforma- 
tion, pp.  359-375.  The  Jesuit  Stengel,  in  his  De  judiciis  divinis  (Ingolstadt,  165 1), 
devotes  a  whole  chapter  to  an  exorcism,  by  the  great  Canisius,  of  a  spirit  that  had 
baffled  Protestant  conjuration.  Among  the  most  jubilant  Catholic  satires  of  the 
time  are  those  exulting  in  Luther's  alleged  failure  as  an  exorcist. 

f  For  the  attitude  of  the  Catholic  clergy,  the  best  sources  are  the  confidential 
Jesuit  Litter  a  Annua.  To  this  day  the  numerous  treatises  on  "pastoral  medi- 
cine" in  use  in  the  older  Church  devote  themselves  mainly  to  this  sort  of  warfare 
with  the  devil. 

\  Baptismal  exorcism  continued  in  use  among  the  Lutherans  till  in  the  ci^lu- 
eenth  century,  though  the  struggle  over  its  abandonment  had  been  long  and  sharp. 
See  Krafft,  Historic  vom  Exorcismo,  Hamburg,  1750. 


n8       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"    TO   INSANITY. 

crimes.  Other  popes  had  since  reiterated  the  appeal  ;  and, 
though  none  of  these  documents  touched  on  the  blame  of 
witchcraft  for  diabolic  possession,  the  inquisitors  charged 
with  their  execution  pointed  it  out  most  clearly  in  their 
fearful  handbook,  the  Witch-Hammer,  and  prescribed  the 
special  means  by  which  possession  thus  caused  should  be 
met.  These  teachings  took  firm  root  in  religious  minds 
everywhere;  and  during  the  great  age  of  witch-burning 
that  followed  the  Reformation  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  any  single  cause  so  often  gave  rise  to  an  outbreak 
of  the  persecution  as  the  alleged  bewitchment  of  some  poor 
mad  or  foolish  or  hysterical  creature.  The  persecution, 
thus  once  under  way,  fed  itself ;  for,  under  the  terrible 
doctrine  of  "  excepted  cases,"  by  which  in  the  religious 
crimes  of  heresy  and  witchcraft  there  was  no  limit  to  the 
use  of  torture,  the  witch  was  forced  to  confess  to  accom- 
plices, who  in  turn  accused  others,  and  so  on  to  the  end  of 
the  chapter.* 

The  horrors  of  such  a  persecution,  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  an  ever-present  devil  it  breathed  and  the  panic  terror 
of  him  it  inspired,  could  not  but  aggravate  the  insanity  it 
claimed  to  cure.  Well-authenticated,  though  rarer  than  is 
often  believed,  were  the  cases  where  crazed  women  volun- 
tarily accused  themselves  of  this  impossible  crime.  One  of 
the  most  eminent  authorities  on  diseases  of  the  mind  de- 
clares that  among  the  unfortunate  beings  who  were  put  to 
death  for  witchcraft  he  recognises  well-marked  victims  of 
cerebral  disorders ;  while  an  equally  eminent  authority  in 
Germany  tells  us  that,  in  a  most  careful  study  of  the  original 
records  of  their  trials  by  torture,  he  has  often  found  their 
answers  and  recorded  conversations  exactly  like  those  famil- 
iar to  him  in  our  modern  lunatic  asylums,  and  names  some 
forms  of  insanity  which  constantly  and  unmistakably  appear 


*  The  Jesuit  Stengel,  professor  at  Ingolstadt,  who  (in  his  great  work,  De  judi- 
ciis  divinis)  urges,  as  reasons  why  a  merciful  God  permits  illness,  his  wish  to  glorify 
himself  through  the  miracles  wrought  by  his  Church,  and  his  desire  to  test  the 
faith  of  men  by  letting  them  choose  between  the  holy  aid  of  the  Church  and  the 
illicit  resort  to  medicine,  declares  that  there  is  a  difference  between  simple  posses- 
sion and  that  brought  by  bewitchment,  and  insists  that  the  latter  is  the  more  dif- 
ficult to  treat. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   A   HEALTHFUL   SCEPTICISM. 


II9 


among  those  who  suffered  for  criminal  dealings  with  the 
devil.* 

The  result  of  this  widespread  terror  was  naturally,  there- 
fore, a  steady  increase  in  mental  disorders.  A  great  modern 
authority  tells  us  that,  although  modern  civilization  tends  to 
increase  insanity,  the  number  of  lunatics  at  present  is  far 
less  than  in  the  ages  of  faith  and  in  the  Reformation  period. 
The  treatment  of  the  "  possessed,"  as  we  find  it  laid  down  in 
standard  treatises,  sanctioned  by  orthodox  churchmen  and 
jurists,  accounts  for  this  abundantly.  One  sort  of  treatment 
used  for  those  accused  of  witchcraft  will  also  serve  to  show 
this — the  "  tortura  insomnia?."  Of  all  things  in  brain-disease, 
calm  and  regular  sleep  is  most  certainly  beneficial ;  yet,  un- 
der this  practice,  these  half-crazed  creatures  were  prevented, 
night  after  night  and  day  after  day,  from  sleeping  or  even 
resting.  In  this  way  temporary  delusion  became  chronic 
insanity,  mild  cases  became  violent,  torture  and  death  en- 
sued, and  the  "  ways  of  God  to  man  "  were  justified. f 

But  the  most  contemptible  creatures  in  all  those  centuries 
were  the  physicians  who  took  sides  with  religious  ortho- 
doxy. While  we  have,  on  the  side  of  truth,  Fladc  sacrificing 
his  life,  Cornelius  Agrippa  his  liberty,  Wier  and  Loos  their 
hopes  of  preferment,  Bekker  his  position,  and  Thomasius  his 
ease,  reputation,  and  friends,  we  find,  as  allies  of  the  other 
side,  a  troop  of  eminently  respectable  doctors  mixing  Scrip- 
ture, metaphysics,  and  pretended  observations  to  support 
the  "safe  side"  and  to  deprecate  interference  with  the  ex- 
isting superstition,  which  seemed  to  them  "a  very  safe  belief 
to  be  held  by  the  common  people.":}: 


*  See  D.  II.  Tuke,  Chapters  in  the  History  of  the  Insane  in  the  British  Isles, 
London,  1882,  p.  36  ;  also  Kirchhoff,  p.  340.  The  forms  of  insanity  especially 
mentioned  are  "dementia  senilis  "  and  epilepsy.  A  striking  case  of  voluntary  con- 
fession of  witchcraft  by  a  woman  who  lived  to  recover  from  the  delusion  is  narrated 
in  great  detail  by  Reginald  Scot,  in  his  Discovery  of  Witchcraft,  London,  L584 
It  is,  alas,  only  too  likely  that  the  "strangeness"  caused  by  slight  and  unrecog- 
nised mania  led  often  to  the  accusation  of  witchcraft  instead  of  to  the  suspicion  of 
possession. 

■f  See  Kirchhoff,  as  above. 

\  I*'or  the  arguments  used  by  creatures  of  this  sort,  see  Diefenbach,  Per  Hexen- 
wahn  vor  und  nach  Jcr  Glaubenssfaltung  in  Deutschland,  pp.  342-346.  A  long 
list  of  their  infamous  names  is  given  on  p.  345. 


120       FROM   "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO   INSANITY. 

Against  one  form  of  insanity  both  Catholics  and  Prot- 
estants were  especially  cruel.  Nothing  is  more  common  in 
all  times  of  religious  excitement  than  strange  personal  hal- 
lucinations, involving  the  belief,  by  the  insane  patient,  that 
he  is  a  divine  person.  In  the  most  striking  representation 
of  insanity  that  has  ever  been  made,  Kaulbach  shows,  at  the 
centre  of  his  wonderful  group,  a  patient  drawing  attention 
to  himself  as  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 

Sometimes,  when  this  form  of  disease  took  a  milder  hys- 
terical character,  the  subject  of  it  was  treated  with  rever- 
ence, and  even  elevated  to  sainthood  :  such  examples  as  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi  and  St.  Catherine  of  Siena  in  Italy,  St. 
Bridget  in  Sweden,  St.  Theresa  in  Spain,  St.  Mary  Alacoque 
in  France,  and  Louise  Lateau  in  Belgium,  are  typical.  But 
more  frequently  such  cases  shocked  public  feeling,  and  were 
treated  with  especial  rigour:  typical  of  this  is  the  case  of 
Simon  Marin,  who  in  his  insanity  believed  himself  to  be  the 
Son  of  God,  and  was  on  that  account  burned  alive  at  Paris 
and  his  ashes  scattered  to  the  winds.* 

The  profundity  of  theologians  and  jurists  constantly  de- 
veloped new  theories  as  to  the  modes  of  diabolic  entrance 
into  the  "  possessed."  One  such  theory  was  that  Satan  could 
be  taken  into  the  mouth  with  one's  food — perhaps  in  the 
form  of  an  insect  swallowed  on  a  leaf  of  salad,  and  this  was 
sanctioned,  as  we  have  seen,  by  no  less  infallible  an  au- 
thority than  Gregory  the  Great,  Pope  and  Saint.  An- 
other theory  was  that  Satan  entered  the  body  when  the 
mouth  was  opened  to  breathe,  and  there  are  well-authen- 
ticated cases  of  doctors  and  divines  who,  when  casting  out 
evil  spirits,  took  especial  care  lest  the  imp  might  jump 
into  their  own  mouths  from  the  mouth  of  the  patient.  An- 
other theory  was  that  the  devil  entered  human  beings  dur- 
ing sleep;  and  at  a  comparatively  recent  period  a  King  of 


*  As  to  the  frequency  among  the  insane  of  this  form  of  belief,  see  Calmeil,  vol. 
ii,  p.  257;  also  Maudsley,  Pathology  of  Mind,  pp.  201,  202,  and  418-424;  also 
Rambaud,  Histoire  de  la  Civilisation  en  France,  vol.  ii,  p.  no.  For  the  peculiar 
aberrations  of  the  saints  above  named  and  other  ecstatics,  see  Maudsley,  as  above, 
pp.  71,  72,  and  149,  150.  Maudsley's  chapters  on  this  and  cognate  subjects  are 
certainly  among  the  most  valuable  contributions  to  modern  thought.  For  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  most  recent  case,  see  Warlomont,  Louise  Lateau,  Paris,  1875. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   A   HEALTHFUL   SCEPTICISM.  l2\ 

Spain  was  wont  to  sleep  between  two  monks,  to  keep  off  the 
devil.* 

The  monasteries  were  frequent  sources  of  that  form  of 
mental  disease  which  was  supposed  to  be  caused  by  bewitch- 
ment. From  the  earliest  period  it  is  evident  that  monastic 
life  tended  to  develop  insanity.  Such  cases  as  that  oi  St. 
Anthony  are  typical  of  its  effects  upon  the  strongest  minds  ; 
but  it  was  especially  the  convents  for  women  that  became 
the  great  breeding-beds  of  this  disease.  Among  the  large 
numbers  of  women  and  girls  thus  assembled — many  of  them 
forced  into  monastic  seclusion  against  their  will,  for  the  rea- 
son that  their  families  could  give  them  no  dower — subjected 
to  the  unsatisfied  longings,  suspicions,  bickerings,  petty  jeal- 
ousies, envies,  and  hatreds,  so  inevitable  in  convent  life — 
mental  disease  was  not  unlikely  to  be  developed  at  any 
moment.  Hysterical  excitement  in  nunneries  took  shapes 
sometimes  comical,  but  more  generally  tragical.  Note- 
worthy is  it  that  the  last  places  where  executions  for  witch- 
craft took  place  were  mainly  in  the  neighbourhood  of  great 
nunneries;  and  the  last  famous  victim,  of  the  myriads  exe- 
cuted in  Germany  for  this  imaginary  crime,  was  Sister  Anna 
Renata  Sanger,  sub-prioress  of  a  nunnery  near  Wurzburg.f 

The  same  thing  was  seen  among  young  women  exposed 
to  sundry  fanatical  Protestant  preachers.  Insanity,  both  tem- 
porary and  permanent,  was  thus  frequently  developed  among 
the  Huguenots  of  France,  and  has  been  thus  produced  in 
America,  from  the  days  of  the  Salem  persecution  down  to 
the  "  camp  meetings  "  of  the  present  time.;}: 


*  As  to  the  devil's  entering  into  the  mouth  while  eating,  see  Calmeil,  as  above, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  105,  106.  As  to  the  dread  of  Dr.  Borde  lest  the  evil  spirit,  when  exor- 
cised, might  enter  his  own  body,  see  Tuke,  as  above,  p.  28.  As  to  the  King  of 
Spain,  see  the  noted  chapter  in  Buckle's  History  of  Civilization  in  England. 

f  Among  the  multitude  of  authorities  on  this  point,  see  Kirchhoff,  as  above,  p. 
337:  and  for  a  most  striking  picture  of  this  dark  side  of  convent  life,  drawn,  in- 
deed, by  a  devoted  Roman  Catholic,  see  Manzoni's  Promessi  Sfosi.  On  Anna 
Renata  there  is  a  striking  essay  by  the  late  Johannes  Scherr,  in  his  Hammerschlage 
und  llistoricn.  On  the  general  subject  of  hysteria  thus  developed,  see  the  writings 
of  Carpenter  and  Tuke  ;  and,  as  to  its  natural  development  in  nunneries,  see  Mauds- 
ley,  Responsibility  in  Mental  Disease,  p.  9.  Especial  attention  will  be  paid  to  this 
in  the  chapter  on  Diabolism  and  Hysteria. 

%  This  branch  of  the  subject  will  be  discussed  more  at  length  in  a  future  chapter. 


I22       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

At  various  times,  from  the  days  of  St.  Agobard  of  Lyons 
in  the  ninth  century  to  Pomponatius  in  the  sixteenth,  pro- 
tests or  suggestions,  more  or  less  timid,  had  been  made  by 
thoughtful  men  against  this  system.  Medicine  had  made 
some  advance  toward  a  better  view,  but  the  theological 
torrent  had  generally  overwhelmed  all  who  supported  a 
scientific  treatment.  At  last,  toward  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  two  men  made  a  beginning  of  a  much  more 
serious  attack  upon  this  venerable  superstition.  The  revival 
of  learning,  and  the  impulse  to  thought  on  material  matters 
given  during  the  "  age  of  discovery,"  undoubtedly  produced 
an  atmosphere  which  made  the  work  of  these  men  possible. 
In  the  year  1563,  in  the  midst  of  demonstrations  of  demoni- 
acal possession  by  the  most  eminent  theologians  and  judges, 
who  sat  in  their  robes  and  looked  wise,  while  women, 
shrieking,  praying,  and  blaspheming,  were  put  to  the  tor- 
ture, a  man  arose  who  dared  to  protest  effectively  that  some 
of  the  persons  thus  charged  might  be  simply  insane;  and 
this  man  was  John  Wier,  of  Cleves. 

His  protest  does  not  at  this  day  strike  us  as  particularly 
bold.  In  his  books,  Dc  Prcestigiis  Dcemonum  and  Dc  Lamiis, 
he  did  his  best  not  to  offend  religious  or  theological  suscep- 
tibilities ;  but  he  felt  obliged  to  call  attention  to  the  mingled 
fraud  and  delusion  of  those  who  claimed  to  be  bewitched, 
and  to  point  out  that  it  was  often  not  their  accusers,  but  the 
alleged  witches  themselves,  who  were  really  ailing,  and  to 
urge  that  these  be  brought  first  of  all  to  a  physician. 

His  book  was  at  once  attacked  by  the  most  eminent 
theologians.  One  of  the  greatest  laymen  of  his  time,  Jean 
Bodin,  also  wrote  with  especial  power  against  it,  and  by  a 
plentiful  use  of  scriptural  texts  gained  to  all  appearance 
a  complete  victory :  this  superstition  seemed  thus  fastened 
upon  Europe  for  a  thousand  years  more.  But  doubt  was 
in  the  air,  and,  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  pub- 
lication of  Wier's  book  there  were  published  in  France  the 
essays  of  a  man  by  no  means  so  noble,  but  of  far  greater  ge- 
nius—Michel de  Montaigne.  The  general  scepticism  which 
his  work  promoted  among  the  French  people  did  much  to 
produce  an  atmosphere  in  which  the  belief  in  witchcraft  and 
demoniacal   possession   must   inevitably   wither.      But  this 


BEGINNINGS   OF   A   HEALTHFUL   SCEPTICISM.  123 

process,  though  real,  was  hidden,  and  the  victory  still  seemed 
on  the  theological  side. 

The  development  of  the  new  truth  and  its  struggle 
against  the  old  error  still  went  on.  In  Holland,  Balthazar 
Bekkcr  wrote  his  book  against  the  worst  forms  of  the  super- 
stition, and  attempted  to  help  the  scientific  side  by  a  text 
from  the  Second  Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  showing  that  the 
devils  had  been  confined  by  the  Almighty,  and  therefore 
could  not  be  doing  on  earth  the  work  which  was  imputed  to 
them.  But  Bekker's  Protestant  brethren  drove  him  from 
his  pulpit,  and  he  narrowly  escaped  with  his  life. 

The  last  struggles  of  a  great  superstition  are  very  fre- 
quently the  worst.  So  it  proved  in  this  case.  In  the  first 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  cruelties  arising  from  the 
old  doctrine  were  more  numerous  and  severe  than  ever 
before.  In  Spain,  Sweden,  Italy,  and,  above  all,  in  Germany, 
we  see  constant  efforts  to  suppress  the  evolution  of  the  new 
truth. 

But  in  the  midst  of  all  this  reactionary  rage  glimpses  of 
right  reason  began  to  appear.  It  is  significant  that  at  this 
very  time,  when  the  old  superstition  was  apparently  every- 
where triumphant,  the  declaration  by  Poulet  that  he  and  his 
brother  and  his  cousin  had,  by  smearing  themselves  with 
ointment,  changed  themselves  into  wolves  and  devoured 
children,  brought  no  severe  punishment  upon  them.  The 
judges  sent  him  to  a  mad-house.  More  and  more,  in  spite 
of  frantic  efforts  from  the  pulpit  to  save  the  superstition, 
great  writers  and  jurists,  especially  in  France,  began  to  have 
glimpses  of  the  truth  and  courage  to  uphold  it.  Male- 
branche  spoke  against  the  delusion  ;  Seguier  led  the  French 
courts  to  annul  several  decrees  condemning  sorcerers;  the 
e-reat  chancellor,  D'Aguesseau,  declared  to  the  Parliament 
of  Paris  that,  if  they  wished  to  stop  sorcery,  they  must  stop 
talking  about  it — that  sorcerers  are  more  to  be  pitied  than 
blamed.* 

But  just  at  this  time,  as  the  eighteenth  century  was  ap- 
proaching, the  theological  current  was  strengthened  by  a 
great  ecclesiastic — the  greatest  theologian  that  France   has 


See  Esquirol,  Des  Maladies  mentales,  vol.  i,  pp.  4S8,  489 ;  vol.  ii,  p.  529. 


124       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION''    TO    INSANITY. 

produced,  whose  influence  upon  religion  and  upon  the  mind 
of  Louis  XIV  was  enormous — Bossuet,  Bishop  of  Meaux. 
There  had  been  reason  to  expect  that  Bossuet  would  at 
least  do  something  to  mitigate  the  superstition  ;  for  his  writ- 
ings show  that,  in  much  which  before  his  day  had  been 
ascribed  to  diabolic  possession,  he  saw  simple  lunacy.  Un- 
fortunately, the  same  adherence  to  the  literal  interpretation 
of  Scripture  which  led  him  to  oppose  every  other  scientific 
truth  developed  in  his  time,  led  him  also  to  attack  this  :  he 
delivered  and  published  two  great  sermons,  which,  while 
showing  some  progress  in  the  form  of  his  belief,  showed 
none  the  less  that  the  fundamental  idea  of  diabolic  possession 
was  still  to  be  tenaciously  held.  What  this  idea  was  may 
be  seen  in  one  typical  statement:  he  declared  that  "a  single 
devil  could  turn  the  earth  round  as  easily  as  we  turn  a 
marble."  * 


III.    THE    FINAL    STRUGGLE   AND  VICTORY   OF   SCIENCE.— 
PINEL   AND   TUKE. 

The  theological  current,  thus  re-enforced,  seemed  to  be- 
come again  irresistible  ;  but  it  was  only  so  in  appearance. 
In  spite  of  it,  French  scepticism  continued  to  develop  ;  signs 
of  quiet  change  among  the  mass  of  thinking  men  were  ap- 
pearing more  and  more  ;  and  in  1672  came  one  of  great  sig- 
nificance, for,  the  Parliament  of  Rouen  having  doomed  four- 
teen sorcerers  to  be  burned,  their  execution  was  delayed  for 
two  years,  evidently  on  account  of  scepticism  among  offi- 
cials ;  and  at  length  the  great  minister  of  Louis  XIV,  Colbert, 
issued  an  edict  checking  such  trials,  and  ordering  the  con- 
victed to  be  treated  for  madness. 

Victory  seemed  now  to  incline  to  the  standard  of  science, 
and  in  1725  no  less  a  personage  than  St.  Andre,  a  court 
physician,  dared  to  publish  a  work  virtually  showing  "dem- 
oniacal possession  "  to  be  lunacy. 

*  See  the  two  sermons,  Stir  les  Ddmons  (which  are  virtually  but  two  forms  of 
the  same  sermon),  in  Bossuet's  works,  edition  of  1845,  vol.  iii,  p.  236  et  seq.\  also 
Dziewicki,  in  The  Nineteenth  Century,  as  above.  On  Bossuet's  resistance  to  other 
scientific  truths,  especially  in  astronomy,  geology,  and  political  economy,  see  other 
chapters  in  this  work. 


THE    FINAL   STRUGGLE    AND   VICTORY   OF   SCIENCE.     I2C 

The  French  philosophy,  from  the  time  of  its  early  devel- 
opment in  the  eighteenth  century  under  Montesquieu  and 
Voltaire,  naturally  strengthened  the  movement ;  the  results 
of  post-mortem  examinations  of  the  brains  of  the  "  possessed  " 
confirmed  it;  and  in  1768  we  see  it  take  form  in  a  declara- 
tion by  the  Parliament  of  Paris,  that  possessed  persons  were 
to  be  considered  as  simply  diseased. 

Still,  the  old  belief  lingered  on,  its  life  flickering  up  from 
time  to  time  in  those  parts  of  France  most  under  ecclesias- 
tical control,  until  in  these  last  years  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury a  blow  has  been  given  it  by  the  researches  of  Charcot 
and  his  compeers  which  will  probably  soon  extinguish  it. 
One  evidence  of  Satanic  intercourse  with  mankind  especially, 
on  which  for  many  generations  theologians  had  laid  peculiar 
stress,  and  for  which  they  had  condemned  scores  of  little 
girls  and  hundreds  of  old  women  to  a  most  cruel  death,  was 
found  to  be  nothing  more  than  one  of  the  many  results  of 
hysteria.* 

In  England  the  same  warfare  went  on.  John  Locke  had 
asserted  the  truth,  but  the  theological  view  continued  to  con- 
trol public  opinion.  Most  prominent  among  those  who  ex- 
ercised great  power  in  its  behalf  was  John  Wesley,  and  the 
strength  and  beauty  of  his  character  made  his  influence  in 
this  respect  all  the  more  unfortunate.  The  same  servitude 
to  the  mere  letter  of  Scripture  which  led  him  to  declare  that 
"  to  give  up  witchcraft  is  to  give  up  the  Bible,"  controlled 
him  in  regard  to  insanity.  He  insisted,  on  the  authority  of 
the  Old  Testament,  that  bodily  diseases  are  sometimes  caused 
by  devils,  and,  upon  the  authority  of  the  New  Testament, 
that  the  gods  of  the  heathen  are  demons;  he  believed  that 
dreams,  while  in  some  cases  caused  by  bodily  conditions  and 
passions,  are  shown  by  Scripture  to  be  also  caused  by  occult 
powers  of  evil ;  he  cites  a  physician  to  prove  that  "  most 
lunatics   are    really    demoniacs."     In    his   great   sermon  on 

*  For  Colbert's  influence,  see  Dagron,  p.  8 ;  also  Rambaud,  as  above,  vol.  ii,  p. 
155.  For  St.  Andre,  see  Lacroix,  as  above,  pp.  189,  190.  For  Charcot's  re-earches 
into  the  disease  now  known  as  Meteorismus  hystericus,  but  which  was  formei 
garded  in  the  ecclesiastical  courts  as  an  evidence  of  pregnancy  through  relations 
with  Satan,  see  Snell,  Hexenprocesse  und  Geistesstorung,  Miinchen,  1S91,  chap-. 
xii  and  xiii. 


126       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

Evil  Angels,  he  dwells  upon  this  point  especially  ;  resists 
the  idea  that  "  possession  "  may  be  epilepsy,  even  though 
ordinary  symptoms  of  epilepsy  be  present;  protests  against 
"  giving  up  to  infidels  such  proofs  of  an  invisible  world  as 
are  to  be  found  in  diabolic  possession";  and  evidently  be- 
lieves that  some  who  have  been  made  hysterical  by  his  own 
preaching  are  "  possessed  of  Satan."  On  all  this,  and  much 
more  to  the  same  effect,  he  insisted  with  all  the  power  given 
to  him  by  his  deep  religious  nature,  his  wonderful  familiarity 
with  the  Scriptures,  his  natural  acumen,  and  his  eloquence. 

But  here,  too,  science  continued  its  work.  The  old  belief 
was  steadily  undermined,  an  atmosphere  favourable  to  the 
truth  was  more  and  more  developed,  and  the  act  of  Parlia- 
ment, in  1735,  which  banished  the  crime  of  witchcraft  from 
the  statute  book,  was  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

In  Germany  we  see  the  beginnings  of  a  similar  triumph 
for  science.  In  Prussia,  that  sturdy  old  monarch,  Frederick 
William  I,  nullified  the  efforts  of  the  more  zealous  clergy 
and  orthodox  jurists  to  keep  up  the  old  doctrine  in  his 
dominions;  throughout  Protestant  Germany,  where  it  had 
raged  most  severely,  it  was,  as  a  rule,  cast  out  of  the  Church 
formulas,  catechisms,  and  hymns,  and  became  more  and  more 
a  subject  for  jocose  allusion.  From  force  of  habit,  and  for 
the  sake  of  consistency,  some  of  the  more  conservative  theo- 
logians continued  to  repeat  the  old  arguments,  and  there 
were  many  who  insisted  upon  the  belief  as  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  ordinary  orthodoxy  ;  but  it  is  evident  that  it  had 
become  a  mere  conventionality,  that  men  only  believed  that 
they  believed  it,  and  now  a  reform  seemed  possible  in  the 
treatment  of  the  insane.* 

In  Austria,  the  government  set  Dr.  Antonio  Haen  at 
making  careful  researches  into  the  causes  of  diabolic  posses- 


*  For  John  Locke,  see  King's  Life  of  Locke,  pp.  326,  327.  For  Wesley,  out  of 
his  almost  innumerable  writings  bearing  upon  the  subject,  I  may  select  the  sermon 
on  Evil  Angels,  and  his  Letter  to  Dr.  Middleton  ;  and  in  his  collected  works  there 
are  many  striking  statements  and  arguments,  especially  in  vols,  iii,  vi,  and  ix.  See 
also  Tyerman's  Life  of  Wesley,  vol.  ii,  pp.  260  et  seq.  Luther's  great  hymn,  Bin' 
feste  Burg,  remained,  of  course,  a  prominent  exception  to  the  rule  ;  but  a  popular 
proverb  came  to  express  the  general  feeling,  "Auf  Teufel  reimt  sich  ZweifelJ'  See 
Langin,  as  above,  pp.  545,  546. 


THE    FINAL   STRUGGLE   AND   VICTORY   OF   SCIENCE.      I27 

sion.  He  did  not  think  it  best,  in  view  of  the  power  of  the 
Church,  to  dispute  the  possibility  or  probability  of  such 
cases,  but  simply  decided,  after  thorough  investigation,  that 
out  of  the  many  cases  which  had  been  brought  to  him,  not 
one  supported  the  belief  in  demoniacal  influence.  An  at- 
tempt was  made  to  follow  up  this  examination,  and  much 
was  done  by  men  like  Francke  and  Van  Swieten,  and  espe- 
cially by  the  reforming  emperor,  Joseph  II,  to  rescue  men 
and  women  who  would  otherwise  have  fallen  victims  to  the 
prevalent  superstition.  Unfortunately,  Joseph  had  arrayed 
against  himself  the  whole  power  of  the  Church,  and  most  of 
his  good  efforts  seemed  brought  to  naught.  But  what  the 
noblest  of  the  old  race  of  German  emperors  could  not  do 
suddenly,  the  German  men  of  science  did  gradually.  Quietly 
and  thoroughly,  by  proofs  that  could  not  be  gainsaid,  they 
recovered  the  old  scientific  fact  established  in  pagan  Greece 
and  Rome,  that  madness  is  simply  physical  disease.  But 
they  now  established  it  on  a  basis  that  can  never  again  be 
shaken  ;  for,  in  post-mortem  examinations  of  large  numbers  of 
"  possessed  "  persons,  they  found  evidence  of  brain-disease. 
Typical  is  a  case  at  Hamburg  in  1729.  An  afflicted  woman 
showed  in  a  high  degree  all  the  recognised  characteristics 
of  diabolic  possession :  exorcisms,  preachings,  and  sanctified 
remedies  of  every  sort  were  tried  in  vain  ;  milder  medical 
means  were  then  tried,  and  she  so  far  recovered  that  she  was 
allowed  to  take  the  communion  before  she  died  :  the  au- 
topsy, held  in  the  presence  of  fifteen  physicians  and  a  public 
notary,  showed  it  to  be  simply  a  case  of  chronic  meningitis. 
The  work  of  German  men  of  science  in  this  field  is  noble 
indeed ;  a  great  succession,  from  Wier  to  Virchow,  have 
erected  a  barrier  against  which  all  the  efforts  of  reactionists 
beat  in  vain.* 

In  America,  the  belief  in  diabolic  influence  had,  in  the 
early  colonial  period,  full  control.  The  Mathers,  so  superior 
to  their  time  in  many  things,  were  children  of  their  time  in 
this:  they  supported  the  belief  fully,  and  the  Salem  witch- 
craft horrors  were  among  its  results  ;  but  the  discussion  of 


*  See  Kirchhoff,  pp.  181-1S7  ;  also  Langin,  Religion  und Hexenprosess,  as  above 
cited. 


128        FROM    "DEMONIACAL    POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

that  folly  by  Calef  struck  it  a  severe  blow,  and  a  better  in- 
fluence spread  rapidly  throughout  the  colonies. 

By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  belief  in  diabolic 
possession  had  practically  disappeared  from  all  enlightened 
countries,  and  during  the  nineteenth  century  it  has  lost  its 
hold  even  in  regions  where  the  mediaeval  spirit  continues 
strongest.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  as  we  have  seen, 
Satan  was  a  leading  personage  in  the  miracle-plays,  but  in 
1S10  the  Bavarian  Government  refused  to  allow  the  Passion 
Play  at  Ober-Ammergau  if  Satan  was  permitted  to  take  any 
part  in  it ;  in  spite  of  heroic  efforts  to  maintain  the  old  be- 
lief, even  the  childlike  faith  of  the  Tyrolese  had  arrived  at  a 
point  which  made  a  representation  of  Satan  simply  a  thing 
to  provoke  laughter. 

Very  significant  also  was  the  trial  which  took  place  at 
Wemding,  in  southern  Germany,  in  1892.  A  boy  had  be- 
come hysterical,  and  the  Capuchin  Father  Aurelian  tried 
to  exorcise  him,  and  charged  a  peasant's  wife,  Frau  Herz, 
with  bewitching  him,  on  evidence  that  would  have  cost 
the  woman  her  life  at  any  time  during  the  seventeenth 
century.  Thereupon  the  woman's  husband  brought  suit 
against  Father  Aurelian  for  slander.  The  latter  urged  in  his 
defence  that  the  boy  was  possessed  of  an  evil  spirit,  if  any- 
body ever  was  ;  that  what  had  been  said  and  done  was  in 
accordance  with  the  rules  and  regulations  of  the  Church,  as 
laid  down  in  decrees,  formulas,  and  rituals  sanctioned  by 
popes,  councils,  and  innumerable  bishops  during  ages.  All 
in  vain.  The  court  condemned  the  good  father  to  fine  and 
imprisonment.  As  in  a  famous  English  case,  "  hell  was  dis- 
missed, with  costs." 

Even  more  significant  is  the  fact  that  recently  a  boy  de- 
clared by  two  Bavarian  priests  to  be  possessed  by  the  devil, 
was  taken,  after  all  Church  exorcisms  had  failed,  to  Father 
Kneipp's  hydropathic  establishment  and  was  there  speedily 
cured.* 


*  For  remarkably  interesting  articles  showing  the  recent  efforts  of  sundry 
priests  in  Italy  and  South  Germany  to  revive  the  belief  in  diabolic  possession — 
efforts  in  which  the  Bishop  of  Augsburg  took  part — see  Prof.  E.  P.  Evans,  on 
Modern  Instances  of  Diabolic  Possession  and  on  Recent  Recrudescence  of  Stipersti- 
tion  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  Dec,  1892,  and  for  Oct.,  Nov.,  1895. 


THE    FINAL  STRUGGLE   AND   VICTORY   OF   SCIENCE.      i  2<  , 

But,  although  the  old  superstition  had  been  discarded, 
the  inevitable  conservatism  in  theology  and  medicine  caused 
many  old  abuses  to  be  continued  for  years  after  the  theo- 
logical basis  for  them  had  really  disappeared.  There  still 
lino-ered  also  a  feeling  of  dislike  toward  madmen,  en- 
gendered by  the  early  feeling  of  hostility  toward  them, 
which  sufficed  to  prevent  for  many  years  any  practical  re- 
forms. 

What  that  old  theory  had  been,  even  under  the  most  fa- 
vourable circumstances  and  among  the  best  of  men,  we  have 
seen  in  the  fact  that  Sir  Thomas  More  ordered  acknowledged 
lunatics  to  be  publicly  flogged  ;  and  it  will  be  remembered 
that  Shakespeare  makes  one  of  his  characters  refer  to  mad- 
men as  deserving  "a  dark  house  and  a  whip."  What  the 
old  practice  was  and  continued  to  be  we  know  but  too 
well.  Taking  Protestant  England  as  an  example — and  it 
was  probably  the  most  humane — we  have  a  chain  of  testi- 
mony. Toward  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Bethle- 
hem Hospital  was  reported  too  loathsome  for  any  man  to 
enter;  in  the  seventeenth  century,  John  Evelyn  found  it  no 
better;  in  the  eighteenth,  Hogarth's  pictures  and  contem- 
porary reports  show  it  to  be  essentially  what  it  had  been  in 
those  previous  centuries.* 

Speaking  of  the  part  played  by  Satan  at  Ober-Ammergau,  Hase  says:  "For- 
merly, seated  on  his  infernal  throne,  surrounded  by  his  hosts  with  Sin  and  Death, 
he  opened  the  play,  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  retained  throughout  a  considerable  part ;  but 
he  has  been  surrendered  to  the  progress  of  that  enlightenment  which  even  the  Ba- 
varian highlands  have  not  been  able  to  escape  "  (p.  80). 

The  especial  point  to  be  noted  is,  that  from  the  miracle-play  of  the  present 
day  Satan  and  his  works  have  disappeared.  The  present  writer  was  unable  to 
detect,  in  a  representation  of  the  Passion  Play  at  Ober-Ammergau,  in  18S1,  the 
slightest  reference  to  diabolic  interference  with  the  course  of  events  as  represented 
from  the  Old  Testament,  or  from  the  New,  in  a  series  of  tableaux  lasting,  with  a 
slight  intermission,  from  nine  in  the  morning  until  after  four  in  the  afternoon. 
With  the  most  thorough  exhibition  of  minute  events  in  the  life  of  Christ,  and  at 
times  with  hundreds  of  figures  on  the  stage,  there  was  not  a  person  or  a  word 
which  recalled  that  main  feature  in  the  mediaeval  Church  plays.  The  present 
writer  also  made  a  full  collection  of  photographs  of  tableaux,  of  engravings  of 
music,  and  of  works  bearing  upon  these  representations  for  twenty  years  before, 
and  in  none  of  these  was  there  an  apparent  survival  of  the  old  belief. 

*  On  Sir  Thomas  More  and  the  condition  of  Bedlam,  see  Tuke,  History  of  the 
Insane  in  the  British  Isles,  pp.  63-73.  One  of  the  passages  of  Shakespeare  is  in 
As  you  Like  It,  Act  iii,  scene  2.  As  to  the  survival  of  indifference  to  the  sufferings 
37 


I3o        FROM   "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO   INSANITY. 

The  first  humane  impulse  of  any  considerable  importance 
in  this  field  seems  to  have  been  aroused  in  America.  In  the 
year  175 1  certain  members  of  the  Society  of  Friends  found- 
ed a  small  hospital  for  the  insane,  on  better  principles,  in 
Pennsylvania.  To  use  the  language  of  its  founders,  it  was 
intended  "as  a  good  work,  acceptable  to  God."  Twenty 
years  later  Virginia  established  a  similar  asylum,  and  gradu- 
ally others  appeared  in  other  colonies. 

But  it  was  in  France  that  mercy  was  to  be  put  upon  a  sci- 
entific basis,  and  was  to  lead  to  practical  results  which  were 
to  convert  the  world  to  humanity.  In  this  case,  as  in  so 
many  others,  from  France  was  spread  and  popularized  not 
only  the  scepticism  which  destroyed  the  theological  theory, 
but  also  the  devotion  which  built  up  the  new  scientific 
theory  and  endowed  the  world  with  a  new  treasure  of 
civilization. 

In  1756  some  physicians  of  the  great  hospital  at  Paris 
known  as  the  Hotel-Dieu  protested  that  the  cruelties  pre- 
vailing in  the  treatment  of  the  insane  were  aggravating  the 
disease ;  and  some  protests  followed  from  other  quarters. 
Little  effect  was  produced  at  first;  but  just  before  the 
French  Revolution,  Tenon,  La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 
and  others  took  up  the  subject,  and  in  1791  a  commission 
was  appointed  to  undertake  a  reform. 

of  the  insane  so  long  after  the  belief  which  caused  it  had  generally  disappeared, 
see  some  excellent  remarks  in  Maudsley's  Responsibility  in  Mental  Disease,  Lon- 
don, 1885,  pp.  10-12. 

The  older  English  practice  is  thus  quaintly  described  by  Richard  Carew  (in  his 
Survey  of  Cornwall,  London,  1602,  1769) :  "  In  our  forefathers'  daies,  when  devo- 
tion as  much  exceeded  knowledge,  as  knowledge  now  commeth  short  of  devotion, 
there  were  many  bowssening  places,  for  curing  of  mad  men,  and  amongst  the  rest, 
one  at  Alternunne  in  this  Hundred,  called  S.  Nunnespoole,  which  Saints  Altar  (it 
may  be)  .  .  .  gave  name  to  the  church.  .  .  .  The  watter  running  from  S.  Nunnes 
well,  fell  into  a  square  and  close  walled  plot,  which  might  bee  filled  at  what  depth 
they  listed.  Vpon  this  wall  was  the  franticke  person  set  to  stand,  his  backe  towards 
the  poole,  and  from  thence  with  a  sudden  blow  in  the  brest,  tumbled  headlong  into 
the  pond  ;  where  a  strong  fellowe,  provided  for  the  nonce,  tooke  him,  and  tossed  him 
vp  and  downe,  alongst  and  athwart  the  water,  vntill  the  patient,  by  forgoing  his 
strength,  had  somewhat  forgot  his  fury.  Then  was  hee  conveyed  to  the  Church, 
and  certain  Masses  sung  over  him  ;  vpon  which  handling,  if  his  right  wits  returned, 
S.  Nunne  had  the  thanks  ;  but  if  there  appeared  small  amendment,  he  was  bows- 
sened  againe,  and  againe,  while  there  remayned  in  him  any  hope  of  life,  for  re- 
couery." 


THE    FINAL   STRUGGLE   AND   VICTORY   OF    SCIENCE.     131 

By  great  good  fortune,  the  man  selected  to  lead  in  the 
movement  was  one  who  had  already  thrown  his  heart  into 
it — Jean  Baptiste  Pinel.  In  1792  Pinel  was  made  physician 
at  Bicetre,  one  of  the  most  extensive  lunatic  asylums  in 
France,  and  to  the  work  there  imposed  upon  him  he  gave 
all  his  powers.  Little  was  heard  of  him  at  first.  The  most 
terrible  scenes  of  the  French  Revolution  were  drawing 
nigh ;  but  he  laboured  on,  modestly  and  devotedly — appar- 
ently without  a  thought  of  the  great  political  storm  raging 
about  him. 

His  first  step  was  to  discard  utterly  the  whole  theolog- 
ical doctrine  of  "  possession,"  and  especially  the  idea  that 
insanity  is  the  result  of  any  subtle  spiritual  influence.  lie 
simply  put  in  practice  the  theory  that  lunacy  is  the  result 
of  bodily  disease. 

It  is  a  curious  matter  for  reflection,  that  but  for  this  sway 
of  the  destructive  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
of  the  Terrorists  during  the  French  Revolution,  Pinel's 
blessed  work  would  in  all  probability  have  been  thwarted, 
and  he  himself  excommunicated  for  heresy  and  driven  from 
his  position.  Doubtless  the  same  efforts  would  have  been  put 
forth  against  him  which  the  Church,  a  little  earlier,  had  put 
forth  against  inoculation  as  a  remedy  for  smallpox ;  but 
just  at  that  time  the  great  churchmen  had  other  things  to 
think  of  besides  crushing  this  particular  heretic :  they  were 
too  much  occupied  in  keeping  their  own  heads  from  the 
guillotine  to  give  attention  to  what  was  passing  in  the  head 
of  Pinel.  He  was  allowed  to  work  in  peace,  and  in  a  short 
time  the  reign  of  diabolism  at  Bicetre  was  ended.  What 
the  exorcisms  and  fetiches  and  prayers  and  processions,  and 
drinking  of  holy  water,  and  ringing  of  bells,  had  been  unable 
to  accomplish  during  eighteen  hundred  years,  he  achieved 
in  a  few  months.  His  method  was  simple  :  for  the  brutality 
and  cruelty  which  had  prevailed  up  to  that  time,  he  sub- 
stituted kindness  and  gentleness.  The  possessed  were  taken 
out  of  their  dungeons,  given  sunny  rooms,  and  allowed  the 
liberty  of  pleasant  ground  for  exercise;  chains  were  thrown 
aside.  At  the  same  time,  the  mental  power  of  each  patient 
was  developed  by  its  fitting  exercise,  and  disease  was  met 
with  remedies  sanctioned  by  experiment,  observation,  and 


lo2       FROM    "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"   TO   INSANITY. 

reason.  Thus  was  gained  one  of  the  greatest,  though  one  of 
the  least  known,  triumphs  of  modern  science  and  humanity. 

The  results  obtained  by  Pinel  had  an  instant  effect,  not 
only  in  France  but  throughout  Europe  :  the  news  spread 
from  hospital  to  hospital.  At  his  death,  Esquirol  took  up  his 
work;  and,  in  the  place  of  the  old  training  of  judges,  tor- 
turers, and  executioners  by  theology  to  carry  out  its  ideas  in 
cruelty,  there  was  now  trained  a  school  of  physicians  to  de- 
velop science  in  this  field  and  carry  out  its  decrees  in  mercy.* 

A  similar  evolution  of  better  science  and  practice  took 
place  in  England.  In  spite  of  the  coldness,  and  even  hostility, 
of  the  greater  men  in  the  Established  Church,  and  notwith- 
standing the  scriptural  demonstrations  of  Wesley  that  the 
majority  of  the  insane  were  possessed  of  devils,  the  scientific 
method  steadily  gathered  strength.  In  1750  the  condition  of 
the  insane  began  to  attract  especial  attention  ;  it  was  found 
that  mad-houses  were  swayed  by  ideas  utterly  indefensible, 
and  that  the  practices  engendered  by  these  ideas  were  mon- 
strous. As  a  rule,  the  patients  were  immured  in  cells,  and 
in  many  cases  were  chained  to  the  walls  ;  in  others,  flogging 
and  starvation  played  leading  parts,  and  in  some  cases  the 
patients  were  killed.  Naturally  enough,  John  Howard  de- 
clared, in  1789,  that  he  found  in  Constantinople  a  better  insane 
asylum  than  the  great  St.  Luke's  Hospital  in  London.  Well 
might  he  do  so ;  for,  ever  since  Caliph  Omar  had  protected 
and  encouraged  the  scientific  investigation  of  insanity  by 
Paul  of  yEe-ina,  the  Moslem  treatment  of  the  insane  had 
been  far  more  merciful  than  the  system  prevailing  through- 
out Christendom.f 

In  1792 — the  same  year  in  which  Pinel  began  his  great 
work  in  France — William  Tuke  began  a  similar  work  in 
England.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  connection  between 
these  two  reformers;  each  wrought  independently  of  the 
other,  but  the  results  arrived  at  were  the  same.     So,  too,  in 


*  For  the  services  of  Tenon  and  his  associates,  and  also  for  the  work  of  Pinel, 
see  especially  Esquirol,  Des  Maladies  mentales,  Paris,  1838,  vol.  i,  p.  35  ;  and  for 
the  general  subject,  and  the  condition  of  the  hospitals  at  this  period,  see  Dagron, 
as  above. 

f  See  D.  H.  Tuke,  as  above,  p.  no ;  also  TreMat,  as  already  cited. 


THE    FINAL   STRUGGLE   AND   VICTORY   OF   SCIENCE.     £33 

the  main,  were  their  methods;  and  in  the  little  house  of  Wil- 
liam Tuke,  at  York,  began  a  better  era  for  England. 

The  name  which  this  little  asylum  received  is  a  monu- 
ment both  of  the  old  reign  of  cruelty  and  of  the  new  rei^n 
of  humanity.  Every  old  name  for  such  an  asylum  had  been 
made  odious  and  repulsive  by  ages  of  misery ;  in  a  happy 
moment  of  inspiration  Tuke's  gentle  Quaker  wife  suggested 
a  new  name  ;  and,  in  accordance  with  this  suggestion,  the 
place  became  known  as  a  "  Retreat." 

From  the  great  body  of  influential  classes  in  church  and 
state  Tuke  received  little  aid.  The  influence  of  the  theo- 
logical spirit  was  shown  when,  in  that  same  year,  Dr.  Pang- 
ster  published  his  Observations  on  Mental  Disorders,  and,  after 
displaying  much  ignorance  as  to  the  causes  and  nature  of 
insanity,  summed  up  by  saying  piously,  "  Here  our  researches 
must  stop,  and  we  must  declare  that  '  wonderful  are  the 
works  of  the  Lord,  and  his  ways  past  finding  out.'  "  Such 
seemed  to  be  the  view  of  the  Church  at  large :  though  the 
new  "Retreat"  was  at  one  of  the  two  great  ecclesiastical 
centres  of  England,  we  hear  of  no  aid  or  encouragement 
from  the  Archbishop  of  York  or  from  his  clergy.  Nor  was 
this  the  worst:  the  indirect  influence  of  the  theological 
habit  of  thought  and  ecclesiastical  prestige  was  displayed  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review.  That  great  organ  of  opinion,  not 
content  with  attacking  Tuke,  poured  contempt  upon  his 
work,  as  well  as  on  that  of  Pinel.  A  few  of  Tuke's  brother 
and  sister  Quakers  seem  to  have  been  his  only  reliance  ;  and 
in  a  letter  regarding  his  efforts  at  that  time  he  says,  "  All 
men  seem  to  desert  me."  * 

In  this  atmosphere  of  English  conservative  opposition  or 
indifference  the  work  could  not  grow  rapidly.  As  late  as 
181 5,  a  member  of  Parliament  stigmatized  the  insane  asylums 
of  England  as  the  shame  of  the  nation  ;  and  even  as  late  as 
1827,  and  in  a  few  cases  as  late  as  1850,  there  were  revivals 
of  the  old  absurdity  and  brutality.  Down  to  a  late  period, 
in  the  hospitals  of  St.  Luke  and  Bedlam,  long  rows  of  the 
insane   were    chained    to    the  walls   of   the  corridors.     But 


*  See  D.  H.  Tuke,  as  above,  pp.  1 16-142,  and  512  ;  also  the  Edinburgh  Review 
for  April,  1803. 


I34        FROM   "DEMONIACAL   POSSESSION"    TO    INSANITY. 

Gardner  at  Lincoln,  Donnelly  at  Hanwell,  and  a  new  school 
of  practitioners  in  mental  disease,  took  up  the  work  of  Tuke, 
and  the  victory  in  England  was  gained  in  practice  as  it  had 
been  previously  gained  in  theory. 

There  need  be  no  controversy  regarding  the  comparative 
merits  of  these  two  benefactors  of  our  race,  Pinel  and  Tuke. 
They  clearly  did  their  thinking  and  their  work  independ- 
ently of  each  other,  and  thereby  each  strengthened  the  other 
and  benefited  mankind.  All  that  remains  to  be  said  is,  that 
while  France  has  paid  high  honours  to  Pinel,  as  to  one  who 
did  much  to  free  the  world  from  one  of  its  most  cruel  super- 
stitions and  to  bring  in  a  reign  of  humanity  over  a  wide  em- 
pire, England  has  as  yet  made  no  fitting  commemoration  of 
her  great  benefactor  in  this  field.  York  Minster  holds  many 
tombs  of  men,  of  whom  some  were  blessings  to  their  fellow- 
beings,  while  some  were  but  "  solemnly  constituted  impos- 
tors "  and  parasites  upon  the  body  politic ;  yet,  to  this  hour, 
that  great  temple  has  received  no  consecration  by  a  monu- 
ment to  the  man  who  did  more  to  alleviate  human  misery 
than  any  other  who  has  ever  entered  it. 

But  the  place  of  these  two  men  in  history  is  secure. 
They  stand  with  Grotius,  Thomasius,  and  Beccaria — the 
men  who  in  modern  times  have  done  most  to  prevent  un- 
merited sorrow.  They  were  not,  indeed,  called  to  suffer 
like  their  great  compeers  ;  they  were  not  obliged  to  see  their 
writings — among  the  most  blessed  gifts  of  God  to  man- 
condemned,  as  were  those  of  Grotius  and  Beccaria  by  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  those  of  Thomasius  by  a  large  section 
of  the  Protestant  Church  ;  they  were  not  obliged  to  flee  for 
their  lives,  as  were  Grotius  and  Thomasius ;  but  their  effort 
is  none  the  less  worthy.  The  French  Revolution,  indeed, 
saved  Pinel,  and  the  decay  of  English  ecclesiasticism  gave 
Tuke  his  opportunity  ;  but  their  triumphs  are  none  the  less 
among  the  glories  of  our  race  ;  for  they  were  the  first  ac- 
knowledged victors  in  a  struggle  of  science  for  humanity 
which  had  lasted  nearly  two  thousand  years. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

FROM  DIABOLISM  TO  HYSTERIA. 

I.  THE   EPIDEMICS   OF   "  POSSESSION." 

In  the  foregoing-  chapter  I  have  sketched  the  triumph  of 
science  in  destroying  the  idea  that  individual  lunatics  are 
"  possessed  by  devils,"  in  establishing  the  truth  that  insanity 
is  physical  disease,  and  in  substituting  for  superstitious  cru- 
elties toward  the  insane  a  treatment  mild,  kindly,  and  based 
upon  ascertained  facts. 

The  Satan  who  had  so  long  troubled  individual  men  and 
women  thus  became  extinct ;  henceforth  his  fossil  remains 
only  were  preserved :  they  may  still  be  found  in  the  sculp- 
tures and  storied  windows  of  mediaeval  churches,  in  sundry 
liturgies,  and  in  popular  forms  of  speech. 

But  another  Satan  still  lived — a  Satan  who  wrought  on 
a  larger  scale — who  took  possession  of  multitudes.  For, 
after  this  triumph  of  the  scientific  method,  there  still  re- 
mained a  class  of  mental  disorders  which  could  not  be 
treated  in  asylums,  which  were  not  yet  fully  explained  by 
science,  and  which  therefore  gave  arguments  of  much  ap- 
parent strength  to  the  supporters  of  the  old  theological 
view:  these  were  the  epidemics  of  "diabolic  possession" 
which  for  so  many  centuries  afflicted  various  parts  of  the 
world. 

When  obliged,  then,  to  retreat  from  their  old  position  in 
regard  to  individual  cases  of  insanity,  the  more  conservative 
theologians  promptly  referred  to  these  epidemics  as  beyond 
the  domain  of  science — as  clear  evidences  of  the  power  of 
Satan  ;  and,  as  the  basis  of  this  view,  they  cited  from  the 
Old  Testament  frequent  references  to  witchcraft,  and,  from 
the  New  Testament,  St.  Paul's  question  as  to  the  possible 

135 


136  FROM   DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

bewitching  of  the  Galatians,  and  the  bewitching  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Samaria  by  Simon  the  Magician. 

Naturally,  such  leaders  had  very  many  adherents  in  that 
class,  so  large  in  all  times,  who  find  that 

"  To  follow  foolish  precedents  and  wink 
With  both  our  eyes,  is  easier  than  to  think."  * 

It  must  be  owned  that  their  case  seemed  strono-  Though 
in  all  human  history,  so  far  as  it  is  closely  known,  these  phe- 
nomena had  appeared,  and  though  every  classical  scholar 
could  recall  the  wild  orgies  of  the  priests,  priestesses,  and 
devotees  of  Dionysus  and  Cybele,  and  the  epidemic  of  wild 
rage  which  took  its  name  from  some  of  these,  the  great 
fathers  and  doctors  of  the  Church  had  left  a  complete  answer 
to  any  scepticism  based  on  these  facts;  they  simply  pointed 
to  St.  Paul's  declaration  that  the  gods  of  the  heathen  were 
devils :  these  examples,  then,  could  be  transformed  into  a 
powerful  argument  for  diabolic  possession.  + 

But  it  was  more  especially  the  epidemics  of  diabolism  in 
mediaeval  and  modern  times  which  gave  strength  to  the  the- 
ological view,  and  from  these  I  shall  present  a  chain  of  typ- 
ical examples. 

As  earlv  as  the  eleventh  century  we  find  clear  accounts 
of  diabolical  possession  taking  the  form  of  epidemics  of  rav- 
ing, jumping,  dancing,  and  convulsions,  the  greater  number 
of  the  sufferers  being  women  and  children.  In  a  time  so 
rude,  accounts  of  these  manifestations  would  rarely  receive 
permanent  record  ;  but  it  is  very  significant  that  even  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eleventh  centurv  we  hear  of  them  at  the 
extremes  of  Europe — in  northern  Germany  and  in  southern 
Italy.  At  various  times  during  that  century  we  get  addi- 
tional glimpses  of  these  exhibitions,  but  it  is  not  until  the  be- 
ginning of  the  thirteenth  centurv  that  we  have  a  renewal  of 
them  on  a  large  scale.     In  1237,  at  Erfurt,  a  jumping  disease 

*  As  to  eminent  physicians'  finding  a  stumbling-block  in  hysterical  mania,  see 
KirchhofFs  article,  p.  351,  cited  in  previous  chapter. 

+  As  to  the  Maenads,  Corybantes,  and  the  disease  "  Corybantism."  see,  for  ac- 
cessible and  adequate  statements,  Smith's  Dictionary  of  Antiquities  and  Lewis  and 
Short's  Lexicon  ;  also  reference  in  Hecker's  Essays  upon  the  Black  Death  and  the 
Dancin  For  more   complete  discussion,  see  Semelaigne,  L' Alienation 

mentale  dans  rAntiquite",  Paris,  1S69. 


THE   EPIDEMICS   OF    "  POSSESSION." 


^37 


and  dancing  mania  afflicted  a  hundred   children,  man  . 
whom  died  in  consequence;  it  spread  through  the  whole  re- 
gion, and  fifty  years  later  we  hear  of  it  in  Holland. 

But  it  was  the  last  quarter  of  the  fourteenth  century  that 
saw  its  greatest  manifestations.  There  was  abundant  cause 
for  them.  It  was  a  time  of  oppression,  famine,  and  pesti- 
lence :  the  crusading  spirit,  having  run  its  course,  had  been 
succeeded  by  a  wild,  mystical  fanaticism  ;  the  most  frightful 
plague  in  human  history — the  Black  Death — was  depopulat- 
ing whole  regions — reducing  cities  to  villages,  and  filling 
Europe  with  that  strange  mixture  of  devotion  and  dissipa- 
tion which  we  always  note  during  the  prevalence  of  deadly 
epidemics  on  a  large  scale. 

It  was  in  this  ferment  of  religious,  moral,  and  social  dis- 
ease that  there  broke  out  in  1374,  in  the  lower  Rhine  region, 
the  greatest,  perhaps,  of  all  manifestations  of  "  possession  " — 
an  epidemic  of  dancing,  jumping,  and  wild  raving. 

The  cures  resorted  to  seemed  on  the  whole  to  intensify 
the  disease :  the  afflicted  continued  dancing  for  hours,  until 
thev  fell  in  utter  exhaustion.  Some  declared  that  they  felt 
as  if  bathed  in  blood,  some  saw  visions,  some  prophesied. 

Into  this  mass  of  "possession"  there  was  also  clearly 
poured  a  current  of  scoundrelism  which  increased  the  dis- 
order. 

The  immediate  source  of  these  manifestations  seems  to 
have  been  the  wild  revels  of  St.  John's  Day.  In  those  revels 
sundrv  old  heathen  ceremonies  had  been  perpetuated,  but 
under  a  nominally  Christian  form  :  wild  Bacchanalian  dances 
had  thus  become  a  semi-religious  ceremonial.  The  religious 
and  social  atmosphere  was  propitious  to  the  development  oi 
the  germs  of  diabolic  influence  vitalized  in  these  orgies,  and 
they  were  scattered  far  and  wide  through  large  tracts  of  the 
Netherlands  and  Germany,  and  especially  through  the  whole 
region  of  the  Rhine.  At  Cologne  we  hear  of  five  hundred 
afflicted  at  once;  at  Metz  of  eleven  hundred  dancers  in  the 
streets;  at  Strasburg  of  vet  more  painful  manifestations:  and 
from  these  and  other  cities  they  spread  through  the  villages 
and  rural  districts. 

The  great  majority  of  the  sufferers  were  women,  but 
there  were  many  men,  and  especially  men  whose  occupations 


!38  FROM   DIABOLISM   TO    HYSTERIA. 

were  sedentary.  Remedies  were  tried  upon  a  large  scale — 
exorcisms  first,  but  especially  pilgrimages  to  the  shrine  of 
St.  Vitus.  The  exorcisms  accomplished  so  little  that  popular 
faith  in  them  grew  small,  and  the  main  effect  of  the  pilgrim- 
ages seemed  to  be  to  increase  the  disorder  by  subjecting 
great  crowds  to  the  diabolic  contagion.  Yet  another  cura- 
tive means  was  seen  in  the  flagellant  processions — vast 
crowds  of  men,  women,  and  children  who  wandered  through 
the  country,  screaming,  praying,  beating  themselves  with 
whips,  imploring  the  Divine  mercy  and  the  intervention  of 
St.  Vitus.  Most  fearful  of  all  the  main  attempts  at  cure 
were  the  persecutions  of  the  Jews.  A  feeling  had  evidently 
spread  among  the  people  at  large  that  the  Almighty  was 
filled  with  wrath  at  the  toleration  of  his  enemies,  and  might 
be  propitiated  by  their  destruction :  in  the  principal  cities 
and  villages  of  Germany,  then,  the  Jews  were  plundered,  tor- 
tured, and  murdered  by  tens  of  thousands.  No  doubt  that, 
in  all  this,  greed  was  united  with  fanaticism  ;  but  the  argu- 
ment of  fanaticism  was  simple  and  cogent ;  the  dart  which 
pierced  the  breast  of  Israel  at  that  time  was  winged  and 
pointed  from  its  own  sacred  books :  the  biblical  argument 
was  the  same  used  in  various  ages  to  promote  persecution  ; 
and  this  was,  that  the  wrath  of  the  Almighty  was  stirred 
against  those  who  tolerated  his  enemies,  and  that  because 
of  this  toleration  the  same  curse  had  now  come  upon  Europe 
which  the  prophet  Samuel  had  denounced  against  Saul  for 
showing  mercy  to  the  enemies  of  Jehovah. 

It  is  but  just  to  say  that  various  popes  and  kings  exerted 
themselves  to  check  these  cruelties.  Although  the  argu- 
ment of  Samuel  to  Saul  was  used  with  frightful  effect  two 
hundred  years  later  by  a  most  conscientious  pope  in  spur- 
ring on  the  rulers  of  France  to  extirpate  the  Huguenots,  the 
papacy  in  the  fourteenth  century  stood  for  mercy  to  the 
Jews.  But  even  this  intervention  was  long  without  effect ; 
the  tide  of  popular  superstition  had  become  too  strong  to  be 
curbed  even  by  the  spiritual  and  temporal  powers.* 

*  See  Wellhausen,  article  Israel,  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  ninth  edition  ; 
also  the  reprint  of  it  in  his  History  of  Israel,  London,  1885,  p.  546.  On  the  gen- 
eral subject  of  the  demoniacal  epidemics,  see  Isensee,  Geschichte  der  Medicin,  vol. 
i,  pp.  260  el  sea. ;  also  Hecker's  essay.     As  to  the  history  of  Saul,  as  a  curious  land- 


THE    EPIDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION."  139 

Against  this  overwhelming  current  science  for  many  gen- 
erations could  do  nothing.  Throughout  the  whole  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  physicians  appeared  to  shun  the  whole  mat- 
ter. Occasionally  some  more  thoughtful  man  ventured  to 
ascribe  some  phase  of  the  disease  to  natural  causes ;  but  this 
was  an  unpopular  doctrine,  and  evidently  dangerous  to  those 
who  developed  it. 

Yet,  in  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  cases  of 
"  possession  "  on  a  large  scale  began  to  be  brought  within 
the  scope  of  medical  research,  and  the  man  who  led  in  this 
evolution  of  medical  science  was  Paracelsus.  He  it  was  who 
first  bade  modern  Europe  think  for  a  moment  upon  the  idea 
that  these  diseases  are  inflicted  neither  by  saints  nor  demons, 
and  that  the  "  dancing  possession  "  is  simply  a  form  of  dis- 
ease, of  which  the  cure  may  be  effected  by  proper  remedies 
and  regimen. 

Paracelsus  appears  to  have  escaped  any  serious  interfer- 
ence :  it  took  some  time,  perhaps,  for  the  theological  leaders 
to  understand  that  he  had  "  let  a  new  idea  loose  upon  the 
planet,"  but  they  soon  understood  it,  and  their  course  was 
simple.  For  about  fifty  years  the  new  idea  was  well  kept 
under;  but  in  1563  another  physician,  John  YYicr,  of  Cleves, 
revived  it  at  much  risk  to  his  position  and  reputation* 

Although  the  new  idea  was  thus  resisted,  it  must  have 
taken  some  hold  upon  thoughtful  men,  for  we  find  that  in 
the  second  half  of  the  same  century  the  St.  Vitus's  dance 
and  forms  of  demoniacal  possession  akin  to  it  gradually 
diminished  in  frequency  and  were  sometimes  treated  as  dis- 
eases. In  the  seventeenth  century,  so  far  as  the  north  of 
Europe  is  concerned,  these  displays  of  "possession"  on  a 
o-reat   scale    had    almost   entirely   ceased ;    here   and    there 


mark  in  the  general  development  of  the  subject,  see  The  Case  of  Saul,  sh 
that  his  Disorder  was  a  Real  Spiritual  Possession,  by  Granville  Sharp,  London, 
1807,  passim.  As  to  the  citation  of  Saul's  case  by  the  reigning  Pope  to  spur  on  the 
French  kings  against  the  Huguenots,  I  hope  to  give  a  list  of  authorities  in  a  future 
chapter  on  The  Church  and  International  Law.  For  the  general  subject,  with 
interesting  details,  see  Laurent,  J&tudes  stir  PHistoire  de  VHumaniU.  See  also 
Maury,  La  Magie  et  I'Astrologie  dans  V AnHqtdU et  ait  Moyen  Age. 

*  For  Paracelsus,  see  Isensee,  vol.  i,  chap,  xi ;  also  Pettigrcw,  Superstitions 
connected  with  the  History  and  Practice  of  Medicine  and  Surgery,  London,  1 --()• 
introductory  chapter.     For  Wier,  see  authorities  given  in  my  previous  chapter. 


140 


FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 


cases  appeared,  but  there  was  no  longer  the  wild  rage  ex- 
tending over  great  districts  and  afflicting  thousands  of  peo- 
ple. Yet  it  was,  as  we  shall  see,  in  this  same  seventeenth 
century,  in  the  last  expiring  throes  of  this  superstition,  that 
it  led  to  the  worst  acts  of  cruelty.* 

While  this  Satanic  influence  had  been  exerted  on  so  great 
a  scale  throughout  northern  Europe,  a  display  strangely  like 
it,  yet  strangely  unlike  it,  had  been  going  on  in  Italy.  There, 
too,  epidemics  of  dancing  and  jumping  seized  groups  and 
communities  ;  but  they  were  attributed  to  a  physical  cause — 
the  theory  being  that  the  bite  of  a  tarantula  in  some  way 
provoked  a  supernatural  intervention,  of  which  dancing  was 
the  accompaniment  and  cure. 

In  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  Fracastoro  made 
an  evident  impression  on  the  leaders  of  Italian  opinion  by 
using  medical  means  in  the  cure  of  the  possessed  ;  though  it 
is  worthy  of  note  that  the  medicine  which  he  applied  suc- 
cessfully was  such  as  we  now  know  could  not  by  any  direct 
effects  of  its  own  accomplish  any  cure :  whatever  effect  it 
exerted  was  wrought  upon  the  imagination  of  the  sufferer. 
This  form  of  "possession,"  then,  passed  out  of  the  super- 
natural domain,  and  became  known  as  "  tarantism."  Though 
it  continued  much  longer  than  the  corresponding  manifesta- 
tions in  northern  Europe,  by  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  had  nearly  disappeared  ;  and,  though  special  mani- 
festations of  it  on  a  small  scale  still  break  out  occasionally, 
its  main  survival  is  the  "  tarantella,"  which  the  traveller  sees 
danced  at  Naples  as  a  catchpenny  assault  upon  his  purse,  f 

But,  long  before  this  form  of  "possession"  had  begun  to 
disappear,  there  had  arisen  new  manifestations,  apparently 
more  inexplicable.  As  the  first  great  epidemics  of  dancing 
and  jumping  had  their  main  origin  in  a  religious  ceremony, 
so  various  new  forms  had  their  principal  source  in  what  were 
supposed  to  be  centres  of  religious  life — in  the  convents,  and 
more  especially  in  those  for  women. 

*  As  to  this  diminution  of  widespread  epidemic  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, see  citations  from  Schenck  von  Grafenberg  in  Hecker,  as  above  ;  also  Horst. 

f  See  Hecker's  Epidemics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  pp.  87-104  ;  also  extracts  and 
observations  in  Carpenter's  Mental  Physiology,  London,  iSSS,  pp.  312-315  ;  also 
Maudsley,  Pathology  of  Mind,  pp.  73  and  following. 


THE    EPIDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION"."  ... 

141 

Out  of  many  examples  \vc  may  take  a  few  as  typical. 
In  the  fifteenth  century  the  chroniclers  assure  us  that,  an 
inmate  of  a  German  nunnery  having  been  seized  with  a  pas- 
sion for  biting  her  companions,  her  mania  spread  until  most, 
if  not  all,  of  her  fellow-nuns  began  to  bite  each  other;  and 
that  this  passion  for  biting  passed  from  convent  to  convent 
into  other  parts  of  Germany,  into  Holland,  and  even  across 
the  Alps  into  Italy. 

So,  too,  in  a  French  convent,  when  a  nun  began  to  mew 
like  a  cat,  others  began  mewing ;  the  disease  spread,  and  was 
only  checked  by  severe  measures.* 

In  the  sixteenth  century  the  Protestant  Reformation 
gave  new  force  to  witchcraft  persecutions  in  Germany,  the 
new  Church  endeavouring  to  show  that  in  zeal  and  power 
she  exceeded  the  old.  But  in  France  influential  opinion 
seemed  not  so  favourable  to  these  forms  of  diabolical  influ- 
ence, especially  after  the  publication  of  Montaigne's  Essays, 
in  1580,  had  spread  a  sceptical  atmosphere  over  many  lead- 
ing minds. 

la  1588  occurred  in  France  a  case  which  indicates  the 
growth  of  this  sceptical  tendency  even  in  the  higher  regions 
of  the  French  Church.  In  that  year  Martha  Drossier,  a 
country  girl,  was,  it  was  claimed,  possessed  of  the  devil.  The 
young  woman  was  to  all  appearance  under  direct  Satanic 
influence.  She  roamed  about,  begging  that  the  demon 
might  be  cast  out  of  her,  and  her  imprecations  and  blas- 
phemies brought  consternation  wherever  she  went.  Myth- 
making  began  on  a  large  scale ;  stories  grew  and  sped. 
The  Capuchin  monks  thundered  from  the  pulpit  throughout 
France  regarding  these  proofs  of  the  power  of  Satan  :  the 
alarm  spread,  until  at  last  even  jovial,  sceptical  King  Henrv 
IV  was  disquieted,  and  the  reigning  Pope  was  asked  to  take 
measures  to  ward  off  the  evil. 

Fortunately,  there  then  sat  in  the  episcopal  chair  of 
Angers  a  prelate  who  had  apparently  imbibed  something 
of  Montaigne's  scepticism — Miron  ;  and,  when  the  case  was 
brought  before  him,  he  submitted  it  to  the  most  time-hon- 
oured of  sacred  tests.     He  first  brought  into  the  girl's  pres- 

*  See  citation  from  Zimmermann's  Solitudt;  in  Carpenter,  pp.  34,  314. 


142 


FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 


ence  two  bowls,  one  containing  holy  water,  the  other  ordi- 
nary spring  water,  but  allowed  her  to  draw  a  false  inference 
regarding  the  contents  of  each  :  the  result  was  that  at  the 
presentation  of  the  holy  water  the  devils  were  perfectly 
calm,  but  when  tried  with  the  ordinary  water  they  threw 
Martha  into  convulsions. 

The  next  experiment  made  by  the  shrewd  bishop  was  to 
similar  purpose.  He  commanded  loudly  that  a  book  of  ex- 
orcisms be  brought,  and.  under  a  previous  arrangement,  his 
attendants  brought  him  a  copy  of  Virgil.  No  sooner  had 
the  bishop  begun  to  read  the  first  line  of  the  JEncid  than  the 
devils  threw  Martha  into  convulsions.  On  another  occasion 
a  Latin  dictionary,  which  she  had  reason  to  believe  was  a 
book  of  exorcisms,  produced  a  similar  effect. 

Although  the  bishop  was  thereby  led  to  pronounce  the 
whole  matter  a  mixture  of  insanity  and  imposture,  the  Capu- 
chin monks  denounced  this  view  as  godless.  They  insisted 
that  these  tests  really  proved  the  presence  of  Satan — show- 
ing his  cunning  in  covering  up  the  proofs  of  his  existence. 
The  people  at  large  sided  with  their  preachers,  and  Mar- 
tha was  taken  to  Paris,  where  various  exorcisms  were 
tried,  and  the  Parisian  mob  became  as  devoted  to  her  as 
they  had  been  twenty  years  before  to  the  murderers  of 
the  Huguenots,  as  they  became  two  centuries  later  to 
Robespierre,  and  as  they  more  recently  were  to  General 
Boulanger. 

But  Bishop  Miron  was  not  the  only  sceptic.  The  Car- 
dinal de  Gondi,  Archbishop  of  Paris,  charged  the  most  emi- 
nent physicians  of  the  city,  and  among  them  Riolan,  to  report 
upon  the  case.  Various  examinations  were  made,  and  the 
verdict  was  that  Martha  was  simply  a  hysterical  impostor. 
Thanks,  then,  to  medical  science,  and  to  these  two  enlight- 
ened ecclesiastics  who  summoned  its  aid,  what  fifty  or  a 
hundred  years  earlier  would  have  been  the  centre  of  a  wide- 
spread epidemic  of  possession  was  isolated,  and  hindered  from 
producing  a  national  calamity. 

In  the  following  year  this  healthful  growth  of  scepticism 
continued.  Fourteen  persons  had  been  condemned  to  death 
for  sorcery,  but  public  opinion  was  strong  enough  to  secure 
a  new  examination  by  a  special  commission,  which  reported 


THE   EPIDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION."  ^ 

that  "  the  prisoners  stood  more  in  need  of  medicine  than  of 
punishment,"  and  they  were  released.* 

Hut  during  the  seventeenth  century,  the  clergy  generally 
having  exerted  themselves  heroically  to  remove  this  "  evil 
heart  of  unbelief  "  so  largely  due  to  Montaigne,  a  theological 
reaction  was  brought  on  not  only  in  France  but  in  all  parts 
of  the  Christian  world,  and  the  belief  in  diabolic  possession, 
though  certainly  dying,  flickered  up  hectic,  hot,  and  malig- 
nant through  the  whole  century.  In  1611  we  have  a  typical 
case  at  Aix.  An  epidemic  of  possession  having  occurred 
there,  Gauffridi,  a  man  of  note,  was  burned  at  the  stake  as 
the  cause  of  the  trouble.  Michaelis,  one  of  the  priestly  exor- 
cists, declared  that  he  had  driven  out  sixty-five  hundred 
devils  from  one  of  the  possessed.  Similar  epidemics  occurred 
in  various  parts  of  the  world,  f 

Twenty  years  later  a  far  more  striking  case  occurred  at 
Loudun,  in  western  France,  where  a  convent  of  Ursuline 
nuns  was  "  afflicted  by  demons." 

The  convent  was  filled  mainly  with  ladies  of  noble  birth, 
who,  not  having  sufficient  dower  to  secure  husbands,  had, 
according  to  the  common  method  of  the  time,  been  made 
nuns. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  that  such  an  imprison- 
ment of  a  multitude  of  women  of  different  ages  would  pro- 
duce some  woful  effects.  Any  reader  of  Manzoni's  Promcssi 
Sposi,  with  its  wonderful  portrayal  of  the  feelings  and  do- 
ings of  a  noble  lady  kept  in  a  convent  against  her  will,  may 
have  some  idea  of  the  rage  and  despair  which  must  have 
inspired  such  assemblages  in  which  pride,  pauperism,  and 
the  attempted  suppression  of  the  instincts  of  humanity 
wrought  a  fearful  work. 

What  this  work  was  may  be  seen  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages;  but  it  is  especially  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  that  we  find  it  frequently  taking  shape  in  outbursts 
of  diabolic  possession.* 

*  For  the  Brossier  case,  see  Calmeil,  La  Folie,  tome  i,  livre  3,  c.  2.  For  the 
cases  at  Tours,  see  Madden,  Phantasmata,  vol.  i,  pp.  309,  310. 

t  See  Dagron,  chap.  ii. 

\  On  monasteries  as  centres  of  "possession"  and  hysterical  epidemics,  see 
Figuier,  Lc  Merveilleux,  p.  40  and  following  ;  also  Calmeil,   Langin,    Kirchhoff, 


J44.  FROM    DIABOLISM    TO   HYSTERIA. 

In  this  case  at  Loudun,  the  usual  evidences  of  Satanic 
influence  appeared.  One  after  another  of  the  inmates  fell 
into  convulsions :  some  showed  physical  strength  appar- 
ently supernatural ;  some  a  keenness  of  perception  quite 
as  surprising ;  many  howled  forth  blasphemies  and  ob- 
scenities. 

Near  the  convent  dwelt  a  priest — Urbain  Grandier — 
noted  for  his  brilliancy  as  a  writer  and  preacher,  but  care- 
less in  his  way  of  living.  Several  of  the  nuns  had  evidently 
conceived  a  passion  for  him,  and  in  their  wild  rage  and 
despair  dwelt  upon  his  name.  In  the  same  city,  too,  were 
sundry  ecclesiastics  and  laymen  with  whom  Grandier  had 
fallen  into  petty  neighbourhood  quarrels,  and  some  of  these 
men  held  the  main  control  of  the  convent. 

Out  of  this  mixture  of  "  possession  "  within  the  convent 
and  malignity  without  it  came  a  charge  that  Grandier  had 
bewitched  the  young  women. 

The  Bishop  of  Poictiers  took  up  the  matter.  A  trial  was 
held,  and  it  was  noted  that,  whenever  Grandier  appeared, 
the  "possessed  "  screamed,  shrieked,  and  showed  every  sign 
of  diabolic  influence.  Grandier  fought  desperately,  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  Archbishop  of  Bordeaux,  De  Sourdis.  The 
archbishop  ordered  a  more  careful  examination,  and,  on 
separating  the  nuns  from  each  other  and  from  certain  monks 
who  had  been  bitterly  hostile  to  Grandier,  such  glaring  dis- 
crepancies were  found  in  their  testimony  that  the  whole 
accusation  was  brought  to  naught. 

But  the  enemies  of  Satan  and  of  Grandier  did  not  rest. 
Through  their  efforts  Cardinal  Richelieu,  who  appears  to 
have  had  an  old  grudge  against  Grandier,  sent  a  representa- 
tive, Laubardemont,  to  make  another  investigation.  Most 
frightful  scenes  were  now  enacted :  the  whole  convent  re- 
sounded more  loudly  than  ever  with  shrieks,  groans,  howl- 
ing, and  cursing,  until  finally  Grandier,  though  even  in  the 
asronv  of  torture  he  refused  to  confess  the  crimes  that  his 
enemies  suggested,  was  hanged  and  burned. 


Maudsley,  and  others.  On  similar  results  from  excitement  at  Protestant  meetings 
in  Scotland  and  camp  meetings  in  England  and  America,  see  Hecker's  Essay,  con- 
cluding chapters. 


THE    EPIDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION." 


145 


From  this  centre  the  epidemic  spread  :  multitudes  of 
women  and  men  were  affected  by  it  in  various  convents ; 
several  of  the  great  cities  of  the  south  and  west  of  France 
came  under  the  same  influence  ;  the  "  possession  "  went  on 
for  several  years  longer  and  then  gradually  died  out,  though 
scattered  cases  have  occurred  from  that  day  to  this.* 

A  few  years  later  we  have  an  even  more  striking  exam- 
ple among  the  French  Protestants.  The  Huguenots,  who 
had  taken  refuge  in  the  mountains  of  the  Cevennes  to  escape 
persecution,  being  pressed  more  and  more  by  the  cruelties 
of  Louis  XIV,  began  to  show  signs  of  a  high  degree  of  re- 
ligious exaltation.  Assembled  as  they  were  for  worship  in 
wild  and  desert  places,  an  epidemic  broke  out  among  them, 
ascribed  by  them  to  the  Almighty,  but  by  their  opponents 
to  Satan.  Men,  women,  and  children  preached  and  prophe- 
sied. Large  assemblies  were  seized  with  trembling.  Some 
underwent  the  most  terrible  tortures  without  showing  any 
signs  of  suffering.  Marshal  de  Villiers,  who  was  sent  against 
them,  declared  that  he  saw  a  town  in  which  all  the  women 
and  girls,  without  exception,  were  possessed  of  the  devil,  and 
ran  leaping  and  screaming  through  the  streets.  Cases  like 
this,  inexplicable  to  the  science  of  the  time,  gave  renewed 
strength  to  the  theological  view.f 

Toward  the  end  of  the  same  century  similar  manifesta- 
tions began  to  appear  on  a  large  scale  in  America. 

The  life  of  the  early  colonists  in  New  England  was  such 
as  to  give  rapid  growth  to  the  germs  of  the  doctrine  of  pos- 
session brought  from  the  mother  country.  Surrounded  by 
the  dark  pine  forests;  having  as  their  neighbours  Indians, 
who  were  more  than  suspected  of  being  children  of  Satan; 
harassed  by  wild  beasts  apparently  sent  by  the  powers  of 
evil  to  torment  the  elect;  with  no  varied  literature  to  while 
away  the  long  winter  evenings;  with  few  amusements  save 
neighbourhood  quarrels;  dwelling  intently  on  every  text 
of  Scripture  which  supported  their  gloomy  theology,  and 

*  Among  the  many  statements  of  Grandier's  case,  one  of  the  best  in  EnglUh 
may  be  found  in  Trollope's  Sketches  from  French  History,  London,  [878.  See 
also  Bazin,  Louis  XIII. 

\  See  Bersot,  Mesmer  et  le  Magnttisme  animal,  third  edition,  Paris,  1 864,  pp. 
95  et  seq.  ¥ 

33 


I46  FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

adopting  its  most  literal  interpretation,  it  is  not  strange 
that  they  rapidly  developed  ideas  regarding  the  darker  side 
of  nature.* 

This  fear  of  witchcraft  received  a  powerful  stimulus  from 
the  treatises  of  learned  men.  Such  works,  coming-  from  Eu- 
rope,  which  was  at  that  time  filled  with  the  superstition, 
acted  powerfully  upon  conscientious  preachers,  and  were 
brought  by  them  to  bear  upon  the  people  at  large.  Natu- 
rally, then,  throughout  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury we  find  scattered  cases  of  diabolic  possession.  At  Bos- 
ton, Springfield,  Hartford,  Groton,  and  other  towns,  cases 
occurred,  and  here  and  there  we  hear  of  death-sentences. 

In  the  last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  fruit 
of  these  ideas  began  to  ripen.  In  the  year  1684  Increase 
Mather  published  his  book,  Remarkable  Providences,  laying 
stress  upon  diabolic  possession  and  witchcraft.  This  book, 
having  been  sent  over  to  England,  exercised  an  influence 
there,  and  came  back  with  the  approval  of  no  less  a  man 
than  Richard  Baxter:  by  this  its  power  at  home  was  in- 
creased. 

In  1688  a  poor  family  in  Boston  was  afflicted  by  demons: 
four  children,  the  eldest  thirteen  years  of  age,  began  leap- 
ing and  barking  like  dogs  or  purring  like  cats,  and  com- 
plaining of  being  pricked,  pinched,  and  cut ;  and,  to  help  the 
matter,  an  old  Irishwoman  was  tried  and  executed. 

All  this  belief  might  have  passed  away  like  a  troubled 
dream  had  it  not  become  incarnate  in  a  strong  man.  This 
man  was  Cotton  Mather,  the  son  of  Increase  Mather. 
Deeply  religious,  possessed  of  excellent  abilities,  a  great 
scholar,  anxious  to  promote  the  welfare  of  his  flock  in  this 
world  and  in  the  next,  he  was  far  in  advance  of  ecclesiastics 
generally  on  nearly  all  the  main  questions  between  science 
and  theology.  He  came  out  of  his  earlier  superstition  re- 
garding the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew  punctuation  ;  he 
opposed  the  old  theologic  idea  regarding  the  taking  of  inter- 
est for  money ;  he  favoured  inoculation  as  a  preventive  of 

*  For  the  idea  that  America  before  the  Pilgrims  had  been  especially  given  over 
to  Satan,  see  the  literature  of  the  early  Puritan  period,  and  especially  the  poetry  of 
Wigglesworth,  treated  in  Tyler's  History  of  American  Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  25 
et  sea. 


THE    EHDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION."  ,^ 

smallpox  when  a  multitude  of  clergymen  and  laymen  opposed 
it;  he  accepted  the  Newtonian  astronomy  despite  the  out- 
cries against  its  "atheistic  tendency";  he  took  ground 
against  the  time-honoured  dogma  that  comets  are  "signs 
and  wonders."  Me  had,  indeed,  some  of  the  defects  of  his 
qualities,  and  among  them  pedantic  vanity,  pride  of  opinion, 
and  love  of  power;  but  he  was  for  his  time  remarkably  lib- 
eral and  undoubtedly  sincere.  He  had  thrown  off  a  large 
part  of  his  father's  theology,  but  one  part  of  it  he  could 
not  throw  off :  he  was  one  of  the  best  biblical  scholars 
of  his  time,  and  he  could  not  break  away  from  the  fact 
that  the  sacred  Scriptures  explicitly  recognise  witchcraft 
and  demoniacal  possession  as  realities,  and  enjoin  against 
witchcraft  the  penalty  of  death.  Therefore  it  was  that  in 
1689  he  published  his  Memorable  Providences  relating  to 
Witchcrafts  and  Possessions.  The  book,  according  to  its 
title-page,  was  "recommended  by  the  Ministers  of  Boston 
and  Charleston,"  and  its  stories  soon  became  the  familiar 
reading  of  men,  women,  and  children  throughout  New 
England. 

Out  of  all  these  causes  thus  brought  to  bear  upon  public 
opinion  began  in  1692  a  new  outbreak  of  possession,  which 
is  one  of  the  most  instructive  in  history.  The  Rev.  Samuel 
Parris  was  the  minister  of  the  church  in  Salem,  and  no  pope 
ever  had  higher  ideas  of  his  own  infallibility,  no  bishop  a 
greater  love  of  ceremony,  no  inquisitor  a  greater  passion  for 
prying  and  spying.* 

Before  long  Mr.  Parris  had  much  upon  his  hands.  Many 
of  his  hardy,  independent  parishioners  disliked  his  ways. 
Quarrels  arose.  Some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  congrega- 
tion were  pitted  against  him.  The  previous  minister,  George 
Burroughs,  had  left  the  germs  of  troubles  and  quarrels,  and 
to  these  were  now  added  new  complications  arising  from  the 
assumptions  of  Parris.  There  were  innumerable  wranglings 
and  lawsuits ;  in  fact,  all  the  essential  causes  for  Satanic  in- 
terference which  we  saw  at  work  in  and  about  the  monastery 
at  Loudun,  and  especially  the  turmoil  of  a  petty  village 
where  there  is  no  intellectual  activity,  and  where  men  and 

*  For  curious  examples  of  this,  see  Upham's  History  of  Salem  Witchcraft^  vol.  i. 


148 


FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 


women  find  their  chief  substitute  for  it  in  squabbles,  reli- 
gious, legal,  political,  social,  and  personal. 

In    the    darkened    atmosphere    thus   charged    with    the 
germs  of  disease  it  was  suddenly  discovered  that  two  young 
girls  in  the  family  of  Mr.  Parris  were  possessed  of  devils : 
they  complained  of  being  pinched,  pricked,  and  cut,  fell  into 
strange  spasms  and  made  strange  speeches — showing  the 
signs  of  diabolic  possession  handed  down  in  fireside  legends 
or  dwelt  upon  in  popular  witch  literature — and  especially 
such  as  had  lately  been  described  by  Cotton  Mather  in  his 
book  on  Memorable  Providences.     The  two  girls,  having  been 
brought  by  Mr.  Parris  and  others  to  tell  who  had  bewitched 
them,  first  charged  an  old  Indian  woman,  and  the  poor  old 
Indian  husband  was  led  to  join  in  the  charge.     This  at  once 
afforded  new  scope  for  the  activity  of  Mr.  Parris.     Magnify- 
ing his  office,  he  immediately  began  making  a  great  stir  in 
Salem   and   in  the  country  round  about.     Two  magistrates 
were  summoned.     With  them   came  a  crowd,  and   a  court 
was  held  at  the  meeting-house.     The  scenes  which  then  took 
place  would  have  been  the  richest  of  farces  had  they  not  led 
to  events  so  tragical.     The  possessed  went  into  spasms  at 
the  approach  of  those  charged  with  witchcraft,  and  when 
the  poor  old  men  and  women  attempted  to  attest  their  in- 
nocence they  were  overwhelmed  with  outcries  by  the  pos- 
sessed, quotations  of  Scripture  by  the  ministers,  and  denun- 
ciations by  the  mob.     One  especially — Ann  Putnam,  a  child 
of  twelve  years — showed  great  precocity  and  played  a  strik- 
ing part  in  the  performances.     The  mania  spread  to  other 
children ;  and  two  or  three  married  women  also,  seeing  the 
great  attention  paid  to  the  afflicted,  and  influenced  by  that 
epidemic  of  morbid  imitation  which  science  now  recognises 
in  all  such  cases,  soon  became  similarly  afflicted,  and  in  their 
turn  made  charges  against  various  persons.      The   Indian 
woman  was  flogged  by  her  master,  Mr.  Parris,  until  she  con- 
fessed relations  with  Satan  ;    and  others  were  forced  or  de- 
luded into  confession.     These  hysterical  confessions,  the  re- 
sults of  unbearable  torture,  or  the  reminiscences  of  dreams, 
which  had  been  prompted  by  the  witch  legends  and  sermons 
of  the  period,  embraced  such  facts  as  flying  through  the  air 
to  witch  gatherings,  partaking  of  witch  sacraments,  signing 


THE   EPIDEMICS   OF   "  POSSESSION." 


149 


a  book  presented  by  the  devil,  and  submitting  to  Satanic 
baptism. 

The  possessed  had  begun  with  charging  their  possession 
upon  poor  and  vagrant  old  women,  but  ere  long,  emboldein  d 
by  their  success,  they  attacked  higher  game,  struck  at  some 
of  the  foremost  people  of  the  region,  and  did  not  cease  until 
several  of  these  were  condemned  to  death,  and  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  brought  under  a  reign  of  terror.  Many 
fled  outright,  and  one  of  the  foremost  citizens  of  Salem  went 
constantly  armed,  and  kept  one  of  his  horses  saddled  in  the 
stable  to  flee  if  brought  under  accusation. 

The  hysterical  ingenuity  of  the  possessed  women  grew 
with  their  success.  They  insisted  that  they  saw  devils 
prompting  the  accused  to  defend  themselves  in  court.  Did 
one  of  the  accused  clasp  her  hands  in  despair,  the  possessed 
clasped  theirs  ;  did  the  accused,  in  appealing  to  Heaven, 
make  any  gesture,  the  possessed  simultaneously  imitated  it ; 
did  the  accused  in  weariness  drop  her  head,  the  possessed 
dropped  theirs,  and  declared  that  the  witch  was  trying  to 
break  their  necks.  The  court-room  resounded  with  groans, 
shrieks,  prayers,  and  curses;  judges,  jury,  and  people  were 
ao-hast,  and  even  the  accused  were  sometimes  thus  led  to 
believe  in  their  own  guilt. 

Very  striking  in  all  these  cases  was  the  alloy  of  frenzy 
with  trickery.  In  most  of  the  madness  there  was  method. 
Sundry  witches  charged  by  the  possessed  had  been  engaged 
in  controversy  with  the  Salem  church  people.  Others  of 
the  accused  had  quarrelled  with  Mr.  Parris.  Still  others  had 
been  engaged  in  old  lawsuits  against  persons  more  or  less 
connected  with  the  girls.  One  of  the  most  fearful  charges, 
which  cost  the  life  of  a  noble  and  lovely  woman,  arose  un- 
doubtedly from  her  better  style  of  dress  and  living.  Old 
slumbering  neighbourhood  or  personal  quarrels  bore  in  this 
way  a  strange  fruitage  of  revenge  ;  for  the  cardinal  doc- 
trine of  a  fanatic's  creed  is  that  his  enemies  are  the  enemies 
of  God. 

Any  person  daring  to  hint  the  slightest  distrust  of  the 
proceedings  was  in  danger  of  being  immediately  brought 
under  accusation  of  a  league  with  Satan.  Husbands  and 
children  were  thus  brought  to  the  gallows  for  daring  to  dis- 


jr0  FROM   DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

believe  these  charges  against  their  wives  and  mothers.  Some 
of  the  clergy  were  accused  for  endeavouring  to  save  mem- 
bers of  their  churches.* 

One  poor  woman  was  charged  with  "  giving  a  look  to- 
ward the  great  meeting-house  of  Salem,  and  immediately  a 
demon  entered  the  house  and  tore  down  a  part  of  it."  This 
cause  for  the  falling  of  a  bit  of  poorly  nailed  wainscoting 
seemed  perfectly  satisfactory  to  Dr.  Cotton  Mather,  as  well 
as  to  the  judge  and  jury,  and  she  was  hanged,  protesting 
her  innocence.  Still  another  lady,  belonging  to  one  of  the 
most  respected  families  of  the  region,  was  charged  with  the 
crime  of  witchcraft.  The  children  were  fearfully  afflicted 
whenever  she  appeared  near  them.  It  seemed  never  to 
occur  to  any  one  that  a  bitter  old  feud  between  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Parris  and  the  family  of  the  accused  might  have  preju- 
diced the  children  and  directed  their  attention  toward  the 
woman.  No  account  was  made  of  the  fact  that  her  life  had 
been  entirely  blameless ;  and  yet,  in  view  of  the  wretched 
insufficiency  of  proof,  the  jury  brought  in  a  verdict  of  not 
guilty.  As  they  brought  in  this  verdict,  all  the  children 
began  to  shriek  and  scream,  until  the  court  committed  the 
monstrous  wrong  of  causing  her  to  be  indicted  anew.  In 
order  to  warrant  this,  the  judge  referred  to  one  perfectly 
natural  and  harmless  expression  made  by  the  woman  when 
under  examination.  The  jury  at  last  brought  her  in  guilty. 
She  was  condemned  ;  and,  having  been  brought  into  the 
church  heavily  ironed,  was  solemnly  excommunicated  and 
delivered  over  to  Satan  by  the  minister.  Some  good  sense 
still  prevailed,  and  the  Governor  reprieved  her;  but  eccle- 
siastical pressure  and  popular  clamour  were  too  powerful. 
The  Governor  was  induced  to  recall  his  reprieve,  and  she 
was  executed,  protesting  her  innocence  and  praying  for  her 
enemies. f 

Another  typical  case  was  presented.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs, against   whom   considerable   ill   will    had    been   ex- 


*  This  is  admirably  brought  out  by  Upham,  and  the  lavvyerlike  thoroughness 
with  which  he  has  examined  all  these  hidden  springs  of  the  charges  is  one  of  the 
main  things  which  render  his  book  one  of  the  most  valuable  contributions  to  the 
history  and  philosophy  of  demoniacal  possession  ever  written. 

f  See  Drake,  The  Witchcraft  Delusion  in  New  England,  vol.  iii,  pp.  34  et  sea. 


THE    EPIDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION. 


151 


pressed,  and  whose  petty  parish  quarrel  with  the  powerful 
Putnam  family  had  led  to  his  dismissal  from  his  ministry, 
was  named  by  the  possessed  as  one  of  those  who  plagued 
them,  one  of  the  most  influential  among:  the  afflicted  being- 
Ann  Putnam.  Mr.  Burroughs  had  led  a  blameless  life,  the 
main  thing  charged  against  him  by  the  Putnams  being  that 
he  insisted  strenuously  that  his  wife  should  not  go  about  the 
parish  talking  of  her  own  family  matters.  He  was  charged 
with  afflicting  the  children,  convicted,  and  executed.  At 
the  last  moment  he  repeated  the  Lord's  Prayer  solemnly 
and  fully,  which  it  was  supposed  that  no  sorcerer  could  do, 
and  this,  together  with  his  straightforward  Christian  utter- 
ances at  the  execution,  shook  the  faith  of  many  in  the  reality 
of  diabolic  possession. 

Ere  long  it  was  known  that  one  of  the  girls  had  acknowl- 
edged that  she  had  belied  some  persons  who  had  been 
executed,  and  especially  Mr.  Burroughs,  and  that  she  had 
begged  forgiveness  ;  but  this  for  a  time  availed  nothing.  Per- 
sons who  would  not  confess  were  tied  up  and  put  to  a  sort 
of  torture  which  was  effective  in  securing  new  revelations. 

In  the  case  of  Giles  Corey  the  horrors  of  the  persecution 
culminated.  Seeing  that  his  doom  was  certain,  and  wishing 
to  preserve  his  family  from  attainder  and  their  property 
from  confiscation,  he  refused  to  plead.  Though  eighty  years 
of  age,  he  was  therefore  pressed  to  death,  and  when,  in  his 
last  agonies,  his  tongue  was  pressed  out  of  his  mouth,  the 
sheriff  with  his  walking-stick  thrust  it  back  again. 

Everything  was  made  to  contribute  to  the  orthodox  view 
of  possession.  On  one  occasion,  when  a  cart  conveying 
eight  condemned  persons  to  the  place  of  execution  stuck  fast 
in  the  mire,  some  of  the  possessed  declared  that  they  saw 
the  devil  trying  to  prevent  the  punishment  of  his  associates. 
Confessions  of  witchcraft  abounded  ;  but  the  way  in  which 
these  confessions  were  obtained  is  touchingly  exhibited  in  a 
statement  afterward  made  by  several  women.  In  explain- 
ing the  reasons  why,  when  charged  with  afflicting  sick  per- 
sons, they  made  a  false  confession,  they  said  : 

"...  By  reason  of  that  suddain  surprizal,  we  knowing 
ourselves  altogether  Innocent  of  that  Crime,  we  were  all 
exceedingly  astonished  and   amazed,  and  consternated  and 


152 


FROM    DIABOLISM   TO   HYSTERIA. 


affrighted  even  out  of  our  Reason  ;  and  our  nearest  and 
dearest  Relations,  seeing  us  in  that  dreadful  condition,  and 
knowing  our  great  danger,  apprehending  that  there  was  no 
other  way  to  save  our  lives,  .  .  .  out  of  tender  .  .  .  pittv 
perswaded  us  to  confess  what  we  did  confess.  And  in- 
deed that  Confession,  that  it  is  said  we  made,  was  no  other 
than  what  was  suggested  to  us  by  some  Gentlemen  ;  they 
telling  us,  that  we  were  Witches,  and  they  knew  it,  and  we 
knew  it,  and  they  knew  that  we  knew  it,  which  made  us 
think  that  it  was  so ;  and  our  understanding,  our  reason, 
and  our  faculties  almost  gone,  we  were  not  capable  of  judg- 
ing our  condition  ;  as  also  the  hard  measures  they  used 
with  us,  rendred  us  uncapable  of  making  our  Defence,  but 
said  anything  and  everything  which  they  desired,  and  most 
of  what  we  said,  was  in  effect  a  consenting  to  what  they 
said.  .  .  ."  * 

Case  after  case,  in  which  hysteria,  fanaticism,  cruelty,  in- 
justice, and  trickery  played  their  part,  was  followed  up  to 
the  scaffold.  In  a  short  time  twenty  persons  had  been  put 
to  a  cruel  death,  and  the  number  of  the  accused  grew  larger 
and  larger.  The  highest  position  and  the  noblest  character 
formed  no  barrier.  Daily  the  possessed  became  more  bold, 
more  tricky,  and  more  wild.  No  plea  availed  anything.  In 
behalf  of  several  women,  whose  lives  had  been  of  the  purest 
and  gentlest,  petitions  were  presented,  but  to  no  effect.  A 
scriptural  text  was  always  ready  to  aid  in  the  repression  of 
mercy :  it  was  remembered  that  "  Satan  himself  is  trans- 
formed into  an  angel  of  light,"  and  above  all  resounded  the 
Old  Testament  injunction,  which  had  sent  such  multitudes 
in  Europe  to  the  torture-chamber  and  the  stake,  "Thou  shalt 
not  suffer  a  witch  to  live." 

Such  clergymen  as  Noyes,  Parris,  and  Mather,  aided  by 
such  judges  as  Stoughton  and  Hathorn,  left  nothing  undone 
to  stimulate  these  proceedings.  The  great  Cotton  Mather 
based  upon  this  outbreak  of  disease  thus  treated  his  famous 
book,  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,  thanking  God  for  the 
triumphs  over  Satan  thus  gained  at  Salem  ;  and  his  book  re- 
ceived the  approbation  of  the  Governor  of  the  Province,  the 

*  See  Calef,  in  Drake,  vol.  ii ;  also  Upham. 


THE   EPIDEMICS   OF    "POSSESSION."  153 

President  of   Harvard  College,  and  various  eminent  theo- 
logians in  Europe  as  well  as  in  America. 

But,  despite  such  efforts  as  these,  observation,  and  thought 
upon  observation,  which  form  the  beginning  of  all  true  sci- 
ence, brought  in  a  new  order  of  things.  The  people  began 
to  fall  away.  Justice  Bradstreet,  having  committed  thirty  or 
forty  persons,  became  aroused  to  the  absurdity  of  the  whole 
'matter ;  the  minister  of  Andover  had  the  good  sense  to  re- 
sist the  theological  view  ;  even  so  high  a  personage  as  Lady 
Phips,  the  wife  of  the  Governor,  began  to  show  lenity. 

Each  of  these  was,  in  consequence  of  this  disbelief, 
charged  with  collusion  with  Satan  ;  but  such  charges  seemed 
now  to  lose  their  force. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  delusion  and  terrorism  stood  Cot- 
ton Mather  firm  as  ever.  His  efforts  to  uphold  the  declin- 
ing superstition  were  heroic.  But  he  at  last  went  one  step 
too  far.  Being  himself  possessed  of  a  mania  for  myth-mak- 
ing and  wonder-mongering,  and  having  described  a  case  of 
witchcraft  with  possibly  greater  exaggeration  than  usual, 
he  was  confronted  by  Robert  Calef.  Calef  was  a  Boston 
merchant,  who  appears  to  have  united  the  good  sense  of  a 
man  of  business  to  considerable  shrewdness  in  observation, 
power  in  thought,  and  love  for  truth  ;  and  he  began  writing 
to  Mather  and  others,  to  show  the  weak  points  in  the  system. 
Mather,  indignant  that  a  person  so  much  his  inferior  dared 
dissent  from  his  opinion,  at  first  affected  to  despise  Calef ; 
but,  as  Calef  pressed  him  more  and  more  closely,  Mather 
denounced  him,  calling  him  among  other  things  "A  Coal 
from  Hell."  All  to  no  purpose:  Calef  fastened  still  more 
firmly  upon  the  flanks  of  the  great  theologian.  Thought 
and  reason  now  began  to  resume  their  sway. 

The  possessed  having  accused  certain  men  held  in  very 
high  respect,  doubts  began  to  dawn  upon  the  community  at 
large.  Here  was  the  repetition  of  that  which  had  set  men 
thinking  in  the  German  bishoprics  when  those  under  trial 
for  witchcraft  there  had  at  last,  in  their  desperation  or  mad- 
ness, charged  the  very  bishops  and  the  judges  upon  the 
bench  with  sorcery.  The  party  of  reason  grew  stronger. 
The  Rev.  Mr.  Parris  was  soon  put  upon  the  defensive:  for 
some  of  the  possessed  began  to  confess  that  they  had  ac- 


154 


FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 


cused  people  wrongfully.  Herculean  efforts  were  made  by 
certain  of  the  clergy  and  devout  laity  to  support  the  declin- 
ing belief,  but  the  more  thoughtful  turned  more  and  more 
against  it;  jurymen  prominent  in  convictions  solemnly  re- 
tracted their  verdicts  and  publicly  craved  pardon  of  God 
and  man.  Most  striking  of  all  was  the  case  of  Justice  Sewall. 
A  man  of  the  highest  character,  he  had  in  view  of  authority 
deduced  from  Scripture  and  the  principles  laid  down  by  the 
great  English  judges,  unhesitatingly  condemned  the  accused ; 
but  reason  now  dawned  upon  him.  He  looked  back  and  saw 
the  baselessness  of  the  whole  proceedings,  and  made  a  public 
statement  of  his  errors.  His  diary  contains  many  passages 
showing  deep  contrition,  and  ever  afterward,  to  the  end  of 
his  life,  he  was  wont,  on  one  day  in  the  year,  to  enter  into 
solitude,  and  there  remain  all  the  day  long  in  fasting,  prayer, 
and  penitence. 

Chief-Justice  Stoughton  never  yielded.  To  the  last  he 
lamented  the  "  evil  spirit  of  unbelief ''  which  was  thwarting 
the  glorious  work  of  freeing  New  England  from  demons. 

The  church  of  Salem  solemnly  revoked  the  excommuni- 
cations of  the  condemned  and  drove  Mr.  Parris  from  the 
pastorate.  Cotton  Mather  passed  his  last  years  in  groaning 
over  the  decline  of  the  faith  and  the  ingratitude  of  a  people 
for  whom  he  had  done  so  much.  Very  significant  is  one  of 
his  complaints,  since  it  shows  the  evolution  of  a  more  scien- 
tific mode  of  thought  abroad  as  well  as  at  home  :  he  laments 
in  his  diary  that  English  publishers  gladly  printed  Calef's 
book,  but  would  no  longer  publish  his  own,  and  he  declares 
this  "an  attack  upon  the  glory  of  the  Lord." 

About  forty  years  after  the  New  England  epidemic  of 
"  possession  "  occurred  another  typical  series  of  phenomena 
in  France.  In  1727  there  died  at  the  French  capital  a  simple 
and  kindly  ecclesiastic,  the  Archdeacon  Paris.  He  had  lived 
a  pious,  Christian  life, and  was  endeared  to  multitudes  by  his 
charity  ;  unfortunately,  he  had  espoused  the  doctrine  of  Jan- 
sen  on  grace  and  free  will,  and,  though  he  remained  in  the 
Gallican  Church,  he  and  those  who  thought  like  him  were 
opposed  by  the  Jesuits,  and  finally  condemned  by  a  papal 
bull. 

His  remains  having  been  buried  in  the  cemetery  of  St. 


THE    EPIDEMICS   OF   "POSSESSION."  lcc 

Medard,  the  Jansenists  flocked  to  say  their  prayers  at  his 
grave,  and  soon  miracles  began  to  be  wrought  there.  Ere 
long  they  were  multiplied.  The  sick  being  brought  and  laid 
upon  the  tombstone,  many  were  cured.  Wonderful  stories 
were  attested  by  eye-witnesses.  The  myth-making  tendency 
— the  passion  for  developing,  enlarging,  and  spreading  tales 
of  wonder — came  into  full  play  and  was  given  free  course. 

Many  thoughtful  men  satisfied  themselves  of  the  truth  of 
these  representations.  One  of  the  foremost  English  scholars 
came  over,  examined  into  them,  and  declared  that  there 
could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  the  cures. 

This  state  of  things  continued  for  about  four  years,  when, 
in  173 1,  more  violent  effects  showed  themselves.  Sundry 
persons  approaching  the  tomb  were  thrown  into  convulsions, 
hysterics,  and  catalepsy ;  these  diseases  spread,  became  epi- 
demic, and  soon  multitudes  were  similarly  afflicted.  Both 
religious  parties  made  the  most  of  these  cases.  In  vain  did 
such  great  authorities  in  medical  science  as  Hecquet  and 
Lorry  attribute  the  whole  to  natural  causes :  the  theologians 
on  both  sides  declared  them  supernatural — the  Jansenists 
attributing  them  to  God,  the  Jesuits  to  Satan. 

Of  late  years  such  cases  have  been  treated  in  France  with 
much  shrewdness.  When,  about  the  middle  of  the  present 
century,  the  Arab  priests  in  Algiers  tried  to  arouse  fanati- 
cism against  the  French  Christians  by  performing  miracles, 
the  French  Government,  instead  of  persecuting  the  priests, 
sent  Robert-Houdin,  the  most  renowned  juggler  of  his  time, 
to  the  scene  of  action,  and  for  every  Arab  miracle  Houdin 
performed  two:  did  an  Arab  marabout  turn  a  rod  into  a 
serpent,  Houdin  turned  his  rod  into  two  serpents ;  and  after- 
ward showed  the  people  how  he  did  it. 

So,  too,  at  the  last  International  Exposition,  the  French 
Government,  observing  the  evil  effects  produced  by  the 
mania  for  table  turning  and  tipping,  took  occasion,  when  a 
great  number  of  French  schoolmasters  and  teachers  were 
visiting  the  exposition,  to  have  public  lectures  given  in 
which  all  the  business  of  dark  closets,  hand-tying,  material- 
ization of  spirits,  presenting  the  faces  of  the  departed,  and 
ghostly  portraiture  was  fully  performed  by  professional 
mountebanks,  and  afterward  as  fully  explained. 


^6  FROM    DIABOLISM   TO    HYSTERIA. 

So  in  this  case.  The  Government  simply  ordered  the 
gate  of  the  cemetery  to  be  locked,  and  when  the  crowd 
could  no  longer  approach  the  tomb  the  miracles  ceased.  A 
little  Parisian  ridicule  helped  to  end  the  matter.  A  wag 
wrote  up  over  the  gate  of  the  cemetery : 

"  De  par  le  Roi,  defense  a.  Dieu 
De  faire  des  miracles  dans  ce  lieu  " — 

which,  being  translated  from  doggerel  French  into  doggerel 
English,  is — 

"  By  order  of  the  king-,  the  Lord  must  forbear 
To  work  any  more  of  his  miracles  here." 

But  the  theological  spirit  remained  powerful.  The 
French  Revolution  had  not  then  intervened  to  bring  it  un- 
der healthy  limits.  The  agitation  was  maintained,  and, 
though  the  miracles  and  cases  of  possession  were  stopped 
in  the  cemetery,  it  spread.  Again  full  course  was  given  to 
myth-making  and  the  retailing  of  wonders.  It  was  said  that 
men  had  allowed  themselves  to  be  roasted  before  slow  fires, 
and  had  been  afterward  found  uninjured;  that  some  had 
enormous  weights  piled  upon  them,  but  had  supernatural 
powers  of  resistance  given  them  ;  and  that,  in  one  case,  a 
voluntary  crucifixion  had  taken  place. 

This  agitation  was  long,  troublesome,  and  no  doubt  robbed 
many  temporarily  or  permanently  of  such  little  brains  as 
they  possessed.  It  was  only  when  the  violence  had  become 
an  old  story  and  the  charm  of  novelty  had  entirely  worn  off, 
and  the  afflicted  found  themselves  no  longer  regarded  with 
especial  interest,  that  the  epidemic  died  away.* 

But  in  Germany  at  that  time  the  outcome  of  this  belief 
was  far  more  cruel.  In  1749  Maria  Renata  Sanger,  sub-pri- 
oress of  a  convent  at  Wiirzburg,  was  charged  with  bewitch- 
ing her  fellow-nuns.  There  was  the  usual  story — the  same 
essential  facts  as  at  Loudun — women  shut  up  against  their 
will,  dreams  of  Satan  disguised  as  a  young  man,  petty  jeal- 

*  See  Madden,  Phantasmata,  chap,  xiv  ;  also  Sir  James  Stephen,  History  of 
France,  lecture  xxvi  ;  also  Henry  Martin,  Histoire  de  France,  vol.  xv,  pp.  168  et 
sea.  ;  also  Calmeil,  liv.  v,  chap,  xxiv  ;  also  Hecker's  essay  ;  and,  for  samples  of 
myth-making,  see  the  apocryphal  Souvenirs  de  Cre'quy. 


BEGINNINGS   OF    HELPFUL   SCEPTICISM.  ^7 

ousies,  spites,  quarrels,  mysterious  uproar,  trickery,  utensils 
thrown  about  in  a  way  not  to  be  accounted  for,  hysterical 
shrieking  and  convulsions,  and,  finally,  the  torture,  confes- 
sion, and  execution  of  the  supposed  culprit.-" 

Various  epidemics  of  this  sort  broke  out  from  time  to 
time  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  though  happily,  as  modern 
scepticism  prevailed,  with  less  cruel  results. 

In  1760  some  congregations  of  Calvinistic  Methodists  in 
Wales  became  so  fervent  that  they  began  leaping  for  joy. 
The  mania  spread,  and  gave  rise  to  a  sect  called  the  "  Jump- 
ers." A  similar  outbreak  took  place  afterward  in  England, 
and  has  been  repeated  at  various  times  and  places  since  in 
our  own  country,  f 

In  1780  came  another  outbreak  in  France;  but  this  time  it 
was  not  the  Jansenists  who  were  affected,  but  the  strictly  or- 
thodox. A  large  number  of  young  girls  between  twelve  and 
nineteen  years  of  age,  having  been  brought  together  at  the 
church  of  St.  Roch,  in  Paris,  with  preaching  and  ceremonies 
calculated  to  arouse  hysterics,  one  of  them  fell  into  convul- 
sions. Immediately  other  children  were  similarly  taken, 
until  some  fifty  or  sixty'  were  engaged  in  the  same  antics. 
This  mania  spread  to  other  churches  and  gatherings,  proved 
very  troublesome,  and  in  some  cases  led  to  results  especially 
painful. 

About  the  same  period  came  a  similar  outbreak  among 
the  Protestants  of  the  Shetland  Isles.  A  woman  having 
been  seized  with  convulsions  at  church,  the  disease  spread 
to  others,  mainly  women,  who  fell  into  the  usual  contortions 
and  wild  shriekings.  A  very  effective  cure  proved  to  be  a 
threat  to  plunge  the  diseased  into  a  neighbouring  pond. 


II.    BEGINNINGS   OF    HELPFUL    SCEPTICISM. 

But  near  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  a  fact  very 
important  for  science  was  established.  It  was  found  that 
these  manifestations  do  not  arise  in  all  cases  from  super- 
natural sources.     In   1787  came  the  noted  case  at  Hodden 

*  See  Soldan,  Scherr,  Diefenbach,  and  others. 

f  See  Adams's  Dictionary  of  All  Religions,  article  on  Jumpers  ;  also  Ilecker. 


158  FROM   DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

Bridge,  in  Lancashire.  A  girl  working  in  a  cotton  manufac- 
tory there  put  a  mouse  into  the  bosom  of  another  girl  who 
had  a  great  dread  of  mice.  The  girl  thus  treated  imme- 
diately went  into  convulsions,  which  lasted  twenty-four 
hours.  Shortly  afterward  three  other  girls  were  seized  with 
like  convulsions,  a  little  later  six  more,  and  then  others,  un- 
til, in  all,  twenty-four  were  attacked.  Then  came  a  fact 
throwing  a  flood  of  light  upon  earlier  occurrences.  This 
epidemic,  being  noised  abroad,  soon  spread  to  another  fac- 
tory five  miles  distant.  The  patients  there  suffered  from 
strangulation,  danced,  tore  their  hair,  and  dashed  their 
heads  against  the  walls.  There  was  a  strong  belief  that  it 
was  a  disease  introduced  in  cotton,  but  a  resident  physician 
amused  the  patients  with  electric  shocks,  and  the  disease 
died  out. 

In  1 801  came  a  case  of  like  import  in  the  Charite  Hos- 
pital in  Berlin.  A  girl  fell  into  strong  convulsions.  The 
disease  proved  contagious,  several  others  becoming  afflicted 
in  a  similar  way  ;  but  nearly  all  were  finally  cured,  princi- 
pally by  the  administration  of  opium,  which  appears  at  that 
time  to  have  been  a  fashionable  remedy. 

Of  the  same  sort  was  a  case  at  Lyons  in  1851.  Sixty 
women  were  working  together  in  a  shop,  when  one  of  them, 
after  a  bitter  quarrel  with  her  husband,  fell  into  a  violent 
nervous  paroxysm.  The  other  women,  sympathizing  with 
her,  gathered  about  to  assist  her,  but  one  after  another  fell 
into  a  similar  condition,  until  twenty  were  thus  prostrated, 
and  a  more  general  spread  of  the  epidemic  was  only  pre- 
vented by  clearing  the  premises.* 

But  while  these  cases  seemed,  in  the  eye  of  Science,  fatal 
to  the  old  conception  of  diabolic  influence,  the  great  major- 
ity of  such  epidemics,  when  unexplained,  continued  to  give 
strength  to  the  older  view. 

In  Roman  Catholic  countries  these  manifestations,  as  we 
have  seen,  have  generally  appeared  in  convents,  or  in  churches 
where  young  girls  are  brought  together  for  their  first  commun- 
ion, or  at  shrines  where  miracles  are  supposed  to  be  wrought. 


*  For  these  examples  and  others,  see  Tuke,  Influence  of  the  Mind  upon  the 
Body,  vol.  i,  pp.  ioo,  277  ;  also  Hecker's  essay. 


BEGINNINGS   OF    HELrFUL   SCEPTICISM. 


159 


In  Protestant  countries  they  appear  in  times  of  great  re- 
lio-ious  excitement,  and  especially  when  large  bodies  of  young 
women  are  submitted  to  the  influence  of  noisy  and  frothy 
preachers.  Well-known  examples  of  this  in  America  are 
seen  in  the  "Jumpers,"  "  Jerkers,"  and  various  revival  ex- 
travagances, especially  among  the  negroes  and  "poor 
whites  "  of  the  Southern  States. 

The  proper  conditions  being  given  for  the  development 
of  the  disease — generally  a  congregation  composed  mainly  of 
young  women — any  fanatic  or  overzealous  priest  or  preacher 
may  stimulate  hysterical  seizures,  which  are  very  likely  to 
become  epidemic. 

As  a  recent  typical  example  on  a  large  scale,  I  take  the 
case  of  diabolic  possession  at  Morzine,  a  French  village  on 
the  borders  of  Switzerland;  and  it  is  especially  instructive, 
because  it  was  thoroughly  investigated  by  a  competent  man 
of  science. 

About  the  year  1853  a  sick  girl  at  Morzine,  acting 
strangely,  was  thought  to  be  possessed  of  the  devil,  and  was 
taken  to  Besancon,  where  she  seems  to  have  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  kindly  and  sensible  ecclesiastics,  and,  under  the 
operation  of  the  relics  preserved  in  the  cathedral  there — 
especially  the  handkerchief  of  Christ— the  devil  was  cast  out 
and  she  was  cured.  Naturally,  much  was  said  of  the  affair 
among  the  peasantry,  and  soon  other  cases  began  to  show 
themselves.  The  priest  at  Morzine  attempted  to  quiet  the 
matter  by  avowing  his  disbelief  in  such  cases  of  possession  ; 
but  immediately  a  great  outcry  was  raised  against  him,  espe- 
cially by  the  possessed  themselves.  The  matter  was  now 
widely  discussed,  and  the  malady  spread  rapidly;  myth- 
making  and  wonder-mongering  began ;  amazing  accounts 
were  thus  developed  and  sent  out  to  the  world.  The  af- 
flicted were  said  to  have  climbed  trees  like  squirrels;  to 
have  shown  superhuman  strength ;  to  have  exercised  the 
gift  of  tongues,  speaking  in  German,  Latin,  and  even  in 
Arabic;  to  have  given  accounts  of  historical  events  they 
had  never  heard  of ;  and  to  have  revealed  the  secret  thoughts 
of  persons  about  them.  Mingled  with  such  exhibitions  of 
power  were  outbursts  of  blasphemy  and  obscenity. 

But  suddenly  came  something  more  miraculous,  appar- 


l6o  FROM    DIABOLISM   TO   HYSTERIA. 

ently,  than  all  these  wonders.  Without  any  assigned  cause, 
this  epidemic  of  possession  diminished  and  the  devil  dis- 
appeared. 

Not  long  after  this,  Prof.  Tissot,  an  eminent  member  of 
the  medical  faculty  at  Dijon,  visited  the  spot  and  began  a 
series  of  researches,  of  which  he  afterward  published  a  full 
account.  He  tells  us  that  he  found  some  reasons  for  the 
sudden  departure  of  Satan  which  had  never  been  published. 
He  discovered  that  the  Government  had  quietly  removed 
one  or  two  very  zealous  ecclesiastics  to  another  parish,  had 
sent  the  police  to  Morzine  to  maintain  order,  and  had  given 
instructions  that  those  who  acted  outrageously  should  be 
simply  treated  as  lunatics  and  sent  to  asylums.  This  policy, 
so  accordant  with  French  methods  of  administration,  cast 
out  the  devil :  the  possessed  were  mainly  cured,  and  the 
matter  appeared  ended. 

But  Dr.  Tissot  found  a  few  of  the  diseased  still  remain- 
ing, and  he  soon  satisfied  himself  by  various  investigations 
and  experiments  that  they  were  simply  suffering  from  hys- 
teria. One  of  his  investigations  is  especially  curious.  In 
order  to  observe  the  patients  more  carefully,  he  invited  some 
of  them  to  dine  with  him,  gave  them  without  their  knowl- 
edge holy  water  in  their  wine  or  their  food,  and  found  that 
it  produced  no  effect  whatever,  though  its  results  upon  the 
demons  when  the  possessed  knew  of  its  presence  had  been 
very  marked.  Even  after  large  draughts  of  holy  water  had 
been  thus  given,  the  possessed  remained  afflicted,  urged  that 
the  devil  should  be  cast  out,  and  some  of  them  even  went 
into  convulsions ;  the  devil  apparently  speaking  from  their 
mouths.  It  was  evident  that  Satan  had  not  the  remotest 
idea  that  he  had  been  thoroughly  dosed  with  the  most  effect- 
ive medicine  known  to  the  older  theology.* 

At  last  Tissot  published  the  results  of  his  experiments, 
and  the  stereotyped  answer  was  soon  made.  It  resembled 
the  answer  made  by  the  clerical  opponents  of  Galileo  when 
he  showed  them  the  moons  of  Jupiter  through  his  telescope, 
and  they  declared  that  the  moons  were  created  by  the  tele- 

*  For  an  amazing  delineation  of  the  curative  and  other  virtues  of  holy  water,  see 
the  Abbe  Gaume,  L'Eau  bcnite  au  XIX"™  Sikle,  Paris,  1866. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   HELPFUL   SCEPTICISM.  if){ 

scope.  The  clerical  opponents  of  Tissot  insisted  that  the 
non-effect  of  the  holy  water  upon  the  demons  proved  noth- 
ing- save  the  extraordinary  cunning  of  Satan  ;  that  the  arch- 
fiend wished  it  to  be  thought  that  he  does  not  exist,  and  so 
overcame  his  repugnance  to  holy  water,  gulping  it  down  in 
order  to  conceal  his  presence. 

Dr.  Tissot  also  examined  into  the  gift  of  tongues  exer- 
cised by  the  possessed.  As  to  German  and  Latin,  no  great 
difficulty  was  presented  :  it  was  by  no  means  hard  to  sup- 
pose that  some  of  the  girls  might  have  learned  some  words 
of  the  former  language  in  the  neighbouring  Swiss  cantons 
where  German  was  spoken,  or  even  in  German)-  itself;  and 
as  to  Latin,  considering  that  they  had  heard  it  from  their 
childhood  in  the  church,  there  seemed  nothing  very  wonder- 
ful in  their  uttering  some  words  in  that  language  also.  As 
to  Arabic,  had  they  really  spoken  it,  that  might  have  been 
accounted  for  by  the  relations  of  the  possessed  with  Zouaves 
or  Spahis  from  the  French  army ;  but,  as  Tissot  could  dis- 
cover no  such  relations,  he  investigated  this  point  as  the 
most  puzzling  of  all. 

On  a  close  inquiry,  he  found  that  all  the  wonderful  ex- 
amples of  speaking  Arabic  were  reduced  to  one.  He  then 
asked  whether  there  was  any  other  person  speaking  or 
knowing  Arabic  in  the  town.  He  was  answered  that  there 
was  not.  He  asked  whether  any  person  had  lived  there,  so 
far  as  any  one  could  remember,  who  had  spoken  or  under- 
stood Arabic,  and  he  was  answered  in  the  negative.  He 
then  asked  the  witnesses  how  they  knew  that  the  language 
spoken  by  the  girl  was  Arabic :  no  answer  was  vouchsafed 
him  ;  but  he  was  overwhelmed  with  such  stories  as  that  of  a 
pig  which,  at  sight  of  the  cross  on  the  village  church,  sud- 
denly refused  to  go  farther  ;  and  he  was  denounced  thor- 
oughly in  the  clerical  newspapers  for  declining  to  accept 
such  evidence, 

At  Tissot's  visit  in  1863  the  possession  had  generally 
ceased,  and  the  cases  left  were  few  and  quiet.  But  his  visits 
stirred  a  new  controversy,  and  its  echoes  were  long  and 
loud  in  the  pulpits  and  clerical  journals.  Believers  insisted 
that  Satan  had  been  removed  by  the  intercession  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  ;  unbelievers  hinted  that  the  main  cause  of 
39 


!62  FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

the  deliverance  was  the  reluctance  of  the  possessed  to  be 
shut  up  in  asylums. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  Bishop  of  Annecy  an- 
nounced that  he  would  visit  Morzine  to  administer  con- 
firmation, and  word  appears  to  have  spread  that  he  would 
give  a  more  orthodox  completion  to  the  work  already  done, 
by  exorcising  the  devils  who  remained.  Immediately  several 
new  cases  of  possession  appeared  ;  young  girls  who  had 
been  cured  were  again  affected  ;  the  embers  thus  kindled 
were  fanned  into  a  flame  by  a  "mission"  which  sundry 
priests  held  in  the  parish  to  arouse  the  people  to  their  re- 
ligious duties — a  mission  in  Roman  Catholic  countries  being 
akin  to  a  "  revival "  among  some  Protestant  sects.  Multi- 
tudes of  young  women,  excited  by  the  preaching  and  appeals 
of  the  clergy,  were  again  thrown  into  the  old  disease,  and  at 
the  coming  of  the  good  bishop  it  culminated. 

The  account  is  given  in  the  words  of  an  eye-witness : 

"  At  the  solemn  entrance  of  the  bishop  into  the  church, 
the  possessed  persons  threw  themselves  on  the  ground  before 
him,  or  endeavoured  to  throw  themselves  upon  him,  scream- 
ing frightfully,  cursing,  blaspheming,  so  that  the  people  at 
large  were  struck  with  horror.  The  possessed  followed  the 
bishop,  hooted  him,  and  threatened  him,  up  to  the  middle  of 
the  church.  Order  was  only  established  by  the  intervention 
of  the  soldiers.  During  the  confirmation  the  diseased  re- 
doubled their  howls  and  infernal  vociferations,  and  tried  to 
spit  in  the  face  of  the  bishop  and  to  tear  off  his  pastoral 
raiment.  At  the  moment  when  the  prelate  gave  his  bene- 
diction a  still  more  outrageous  scene  took  place.  The  vio- 
lence of  the  diseased  was  carried  to  fury,  and  from  all  parts 
of  the  church  arose  yells  and  fearful  howling ;  so  frightful 
was  the  din  that  tears  fell  from  the  eyes  of  many  of  the 
spectators,  and  many  strangers  were  thrown  into  conster- 
nation." 

Among  the  very  large  number  of  these  diseased  persons 
there  were  only  two  men  ;  of  the  remainder  only  two  were 
of  advanced  age;  the  great  majority  were  young  women 
between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and  twenty-five  years. 

The  public  authorities  shortly  afterward  intervened,  and 
sought  to  cure  the  disease  and  to  draw  the  people  out  of 


THEOLOGICAL   "RESTATEMENTS."  163 

their  mania  by  singing-,  dancing,  and  sports  of  various  sorts, 
until  at  last  it  was  brought  under  control.* 

Scenes  similar  to  these,  in  their  essential  character,  have 
arisen  more  recently  in  Protestant  countries,  but  with  the 
difference  that  what  has  been  generally  attributed  by  Roman 
Catholic  ecclesiastics  to  Satan  is  attributed  by  Protestant 
ecclesiastics  to  the  Almighty.  Typical  among  the  greater 
exhibitions  of  this  were  those  which  began  in  the  Methodist 
chapel  at  Redruth  in  Cornwall — convulsions,  leaping,  jump- 
ing, until  some  four  thousand  persons  were  seized  by  it. 
The  same  thing  is  seen  in  the  ruder  parts  of  America  at 
"  revivals  "  and  camp  meetings.  Nor  in  the  ruder  parts  of 
America  alone.  In  June,  1893,  at  a  funeral  in  the  city  of 
Brooklyn,  one  of  the  mourners  having  fallen  into  hysterical 
fits,  several  other  cases  at  once  appeared  in  various  parts  of 
the  church  edifice,  and  some  of  the  patients  were  so  seri- 
ously affected  that  they  were  taken  to  a  hospital. 

In  still  another  field  these  exhibitions  are  seen,  but  more 
after  a  mediaeval  pattern  :  in  the  Tigretier  of  Abyssinia  we 
have  epidemics  of  dancing  which  seek  and  obtain  miracu- 
lous cures. 

Reports  of  similar  manifestations  are  also  sent  from  mis- 
sionaries from  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  one  of  whom  sees  in 
some  of  them  the  characteristics  of  cases  of  possession  men- 
tioned in  our  Gospels,  and  is  therefore  inclined  to  attribute 
them  to  Satan. f 

III.    THEOLOGICAL   "  RESTATEMENTS."— FINAL   TRIUMPH 
OF    THE    SCIENTIFIC   VIEW   AND    METHODS. 

But,  happily,  long  before  these  latter  occurrences,  science 
had  come  into  the  field  and  was  gradually  diminishing  this 
class  of  diseases.  Among  the  earlier  workers  to  this  better 
purpose  was  the  great  Dutch  physician  Boerhaave.     Find- 


*  See  Tissot,  U  Imagination  :  ses  Bicnfaits  et  ses  Egarenicnts  surtout  dins  k 
Domaine  du  Merveilleux,  Paris,  1868,  liv.  iv,  ch.  vii,  §  7 :  les  Possdde'es  dc  Morzine  ; 
also  Constans,  Relation  sur  une  Epidttmie  de  Hyste'ro-Demonopathic,  Paris,  1S63. 

f  For  the  cases  in  Brooklyn,  see  the  New  York  Tribune  of  about  June  10,  1893. 
For  the  Tigretier,  with  especially  interesting  citations,  see  Hecker,  chap,  iii,  sec.  1. 
For  the  cases  in  western  Africa,  see  the  Rev.  J.  L.  Wilson,  Western  Africa,  p.  217. 


^4  FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

ing  in  one  of  the  wards  in  the  hospital  at  Haarlem  a  num- 
ber of  women  going  into  convulsions  and  imitating  each 
other  in  various  acts  of  frenzy,  he  immediately  ordered  a  fur- 
nace of  blazing  coals  into  the  midst  of  the  ward,  heated  cau- 
terizing irons,  and  declared  that  he  would  burn  the  arms  of 
the  first  woman  who  fell  into  convulsions.  No  more  cases 
occurred.  * 

These  and  similar  successful  dealings  of  medical  science 
with  mental  disease  brought  about  the  next  stage  in  the 
theological  development.  The  Church  sought  to  retreat, 
after  the  usual  manner,  behind  a  compromise.  Early  in  the 
eighteenth  century  appeared  a  new  edition  of  the  great 
work  by  the  Jesuit  Delrio  which  for  a  hundred  years  had 
been  a  text-book  for  the  use  of  ecclesiastics  in  fighting  witch- 
craft ;  but  in  this  edition  the  part  played  by  Satan  in  dis- 
eases was  changed  :  it  was  suggested  that,  while  diseases 
have  natural  causes,  it  is  necessary  that  Satan  enter  the 
human  body  in  order  to  make  these  causes  effective.  This 
work  claims  that  Satan  "  attacks  lunatics  at  the  full  moon, 
when  their  brains  are  full  of  humours";  that  in  other  cases 
of  illness  he  "stirs  the  black  bile";  and  that  in  cases  of 
blindness  and  deafness  he  "  clogs  the  eyes  and  ears."  By 
the  close  of  the  century  this  "  restatement "  was  evidently 
found  untenable,  and  one  of  a  very  different  sort  was  at- 
tempted in  England. 

In  the  third  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  pub- 
lished in  1797,  under  the  article  Dcemoniacs,  the  orthodox 
view  was  presented  in  the  following  words :  "  The  reality  of 
demoniacal  possession  stands  upon  the  same  evidence  with 
the  gospel  system  in  general." 

This  statement,  though  necessary  to  satisfy  the  older  theo- 
logical sentiment,  was  clearly  found  too  dangerous  to  be  sent 
out  into  the  modern  sceptical  world  without  some  qualifica- 
tion. Another  view  was  therefore  suggested,  namely,  that 
the  personages  of  the  New  Testament  "  adopted  the  vulgar 
language  in  speaking  of  those  unfortunate  persons  who  were 
generally  imagined  to  be  possessed  with  demons."  Two  or 
three  editions  contained  this  curious  compromise  ;  but  near 

*  See  Figuier,  Histoire  du  Merveilleux,  vol.  i,  p.  403. 


THEOLOGICAL   SUGGESTIONS   OF   COMPROMISE.  165 

the  middle  of  the  present  century  the  whole  discussion  was 
quietly  dropped. 

Science,  declining  to  trouble  itself  with  any  of  these  views, 
pressed  on,  and  toward  the  end  of  the  century  we  see  Dr. 
Rhodes  at  Lyons  curing  a  very  serious  case  of  possession 
by  the  use  of  a  powerful  emetic ;  yet  myth-making  came  in 
here  also,  and  it  was  stated  that  when  the  emetic  produced 
its  effect  people  had  seen  multitudes  of  green  and  yellow 
devils  cast  forth  from  the  mouth  of  the  possessed. 

The  last  great  demonstration  of  the  old  belief  in  England 
was  made  in  1788.  Near  the  city  of  Bristol  at  that  time  lived 
a  drunken  epileptic,  George  Lukins.  In  asking  alms,  he  in- 
sisted that  he  was  "possessed,"  and  proved  it  by  jumping, 
screaming,  barking,  and  treating  the  company  to  a  parody 
of  the  Te  Deum. 

He  was  solemnly  brought  into  the  Temple  Church,  and 
seven  clergymen  united  in  the  effort  to  exorcise  the  evil 
spirit.  Upon  their  adjuring  Satan,  he  swore  "by  his  in- 
fernal den  "  that  he  would  not  come  out  of  the  man — "  an 
oath,"  says  the  chronicler,  "  nowhere  to  be  found  but  in 
Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress,  from  which  Lukins  probably 
got  it." 

But  the  seven  clergymen  were  at  last  successful,  and 
seven  devils  were  cast  out,  after  which  Lukins  retired,  and 
appears  to  have  been  supported  during  the  remainder  of  his 
life  as  a  monument  of  mercy. 

With  this  great  effort  the  old  theory  in  England  seemed 
practically  exhausted. 

Science  had  evidently  carried  the  stronghold.  In  1876, 
at  a  little  town  near  Amiens,  in  France,  a  young  woman  suf- 
fering with  all  the  usual  evidences  of  diabolic  possession  was 
brought  to  the  priest.  The  priest  was  besought  to  cast  out 
the  devil,  but  he  simply  took  her  to  the  hospital,  where, 
under  scientific  treatment,  she  rapidly  became  better.* 

The  final  triumph  of  science  in  this  part  of  the  great  field 
has  been  mainly  achieved  during  the  latter  half  of  the  present 
century. 

Following    in    the    noble    succession    of    Paracelsus   and 

*  See  Figuier  ;  abo  Collin  de  Plancy,  Dictionnaire  Iitfcmale,  article  PosstfJJs. 


!66  FROM    DIABOLISM    TO    HYSTERIA. 

John  Hunter  and  Pinel  and  Tuke  and  Esquirol,  have  come 
a  band  of  thinkers  and  workers  who  by  scientific  observation 
and  research  have  developed  new  growths  of  truth,  ever 
more  and  more  precious. 

Among  the  many  facts  thus  brought  to  bear  upon  this 
last  stronghold  of  the  Prince  of  Darkness,  may  be  named 
especially  those  indicating  "  expectant  attention  " — an  expec- 
tation of  phenomena  dwelt  upon  until  the  longing  for  them 
becomes  morbid  and  invincible,  and  the  creation  of  them 
perhaps  unconscious.  Still  other  classes  of  phenomena  lead- 
ing to  epidemics  are  found  to  arise  from  a  morbid  tendency 
to  imitation.  Still  other  groups  have  been  brought  under 
hypnotism.  Multitudes  more  have  been  found  under  the 
innumerable  forms  and  results  of  hysteria.  A  study  of  the 
effects  of  the  imagination  upon  bodily  functions  has  also 
yielded  remarkable  results. 

And,  finally,  to  supplement  this  work,  have  come  in  an 
array  of  scholars  in  history  and  literature  who  have  investi- 
gated myth-making  and  wonder-mongering. 

Thus  has  been  cleared  away  that  cloud  of  supernatural- 
ism  which  so  long  hung  over  mental  diseases,  and  thus  have 
they  been  brought  within  the  firm  grasp  of  science.  * 

*  To  go  even  into  leading  citations  in  this  vast  and  beneficent  literature  would 
take  me  far  beyond  my  plan  and  space,  but  I  may  name,  among  easily  accessible 
authorities,  Brierre  de  Boismont  on  Hallucinatio7is,  Hulme's  translation,  i860  ; 
also  James  Braid,  The  Power  of  the  Mind  over  the  Body,  London,  1846  ;  Krafft- 
Ebing,  Lehrbuch  der  Psychiatric,  Stuttgart,  1888  ;  Tuke,  l7ifluence  of  the  Mind  on 
the  Body,  London,  18S4  ;  Maudsley,  Pathology  of  the  Mind,  London,  1879  ;  Car- 
penter, Mental  Physiology,  sixth  edition,  London,  1888  ;  Lloyd  Tuckey,  Faith 
Cure,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  December,  18S8  ;  Pettigrevv,  Superstitions  con- 
nected with  the  Practice  of  Medicine  and  Surgery,  London,  1844  ;  Snell,  Hexenpro- 
cesse  und  Geistesstorung,  Miinchen,  1891.  For  a  very  valuable  study  of  interesting 
cases,  see  The  Law  of  Hypnotism,  by  Prof.  R.  S.  Hyer,  of  the  Southwestern  Uni- 
versity, Georgetown,  Texas,  1895. 

As  to  myth-making  and  wonder-mongering,  the  general  reader  will  find  inter- 
esting supplementary  accounts  in  the  recent  works  of  Andrew  Lang  and  Baring- 
Gould. 

A  very  curious  evidence  of  the  effects  of  the  myth-making  tendency  has  recently 
come  to  the  attention  of  the  writer  of  this  article.  Periodically,  for  many  years 
past,  we  have  seen,  in  books  of  travel  and  in  the  newspapers,  accounts  of  the  won- 
derful performances  of  the  jugglers  in  India  :  of  the  stabbing  of  a  child  in  a  small 
basket  in  the  midst  of  an  arena,  and  the  child  appearing  alive  in  the  surrounding 
crowd  ;  of  seeds  planted,  sprouted,  and  becoming  well-grown  trees  under  the  hand 


THEOLOGICAL    SUGGESTIONS   OF   COMPROMISE.  ^7 

Conscientious  men  still  linger  on  who  find  comfort  in 
holding  fast  to  some  shred  of  the  old  belief  in  diabolic  pos- 
session. The  sturdy  declaration  in  the  last  century  by  John 
Wesley,  that  "giving  up  witchcraft  is  giving  up  the  Bible," 
is  echoed  feebly  in  the  latter  half  of  this  century  by  the  emi- 
nent Catholic  ecclesiastic  in  France  who  declares  that  "  to 
deny  possession  by  devils  is  to  charge  Jesus  and  his  apostles 
with  imposture,"  and  asks,  "  How  can  the  testimony  of 
apostles,  fathers  of  the  Church,  and  saints  who  saw  the  pos- 
sessed and  so  declared,  be  denied?"  And  a  still  fainter 
echo  lingers  in  Protestant  England.* 

But,  despite  this  conscientious  opposition,  science  has  in 
these  latter  days  steadily  wrought  hand  in  hand  with  Chris- 
tian charity  in  this  field,  to  evolve  a  better  future  for  human- 
ity. The  thoughtful  physician  and  the  devoted  clergyman 
are  now  constantly  seen  working  together ;  and  it  is  not  too 
much  to  expect  that  Satan,  having  been  cast  out  of  the  in- 
sane asylums,  will  ere  long  disappear  from  monasteries  and 
camp  meetings,  even  in  the  most  unenlightened  regions  of 
Christendom. 


of  the  juggler  ;  of  ropes  thrown  into  the  air  and  sustained  by  invisible  force.  Count 
de  Gubernatis,  the  eminent  professor  and  Oriental  scholar  at  Florence,  informed 
the  present  writer  that  he  had  recently  seen  and  studied  these  exhibitions,  and  that, 
so  far  from  being  wonderful,  they  were  much  inferior  to  the  jugglery  so  well  known 
in  all  our  Western  capitals. 

*  See  the  Abbe  Barthelemi,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  la  Conversation  ;  also  the  Rev. 
W.  Scott's  Doctrine  of  Evil  Spirits  proved,  London,  1853  ;  also  the  vigorous  pro- 
test of  Dean  Burgon  against  the  action  of  the  New  Testament  revisers,  in  substi- 
tuting the  word  "epileptic"  for  "lunatic"  in  Matthew  xvii,  15,  published  in  the 
Quarterly  Review  for  January,  1882. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

FROM  BABEL   TO    COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

I.    THE   SACRED   THEORY   IN    ITS   FIRST   FORM. 

Among  the  sciences  which  have  served  as  entering: 
wedges  into  the  heavy  mass  of  ecclesiastical  orthodoxy — to 
cleave  it,  disintegrate  it,  and  let  the  light  of  Christianity  into 
it — none  perhaps  has  done  a  more  striking  work  than  Com- 
parative Philology.  In  one  very  important  respect  the  his- 
tory of  this  science  differs  from  that  of  any  other;  for  it  is 
the  only  one  whose  conclusions  theologians  have  at  last  fully 
adopted  as  the  result  of  their  own  studies.  This  adoption 
teaches  a  great  lesson,  since,  while  it  has  destroyed  theo- 
logical views  cherished  during  many  centuries,  and  obliged 
the  Church  to  accept  theories  directly  contrary  to  the  plain 
letter  of  our  sacred  books,  the  result  is  clearly  seen  to  have 
helped  Christianity  rather  than  to  have  hurt  it.  It  has  cer- 
tainly done  much  to  clear  our  religious  foundations  of  the 
dogmatic  rust  which  was  eating  into  their  structure. 

How  this  result  was  reached,  and  why  the  Church  has 
so  fully  accepted  it,  I  shall  endeavour  to  show  in  the  present 
chapter. 

At  a  very  early  period  in  the  evolution  of  civilization 
men  began  to  ask  questions  regarding  language ;  and  the 
answers  to  these  questions  were  naturally  embodied  in  the 
myths,  legends,  and  chronicles  of  their  sacred  books. 

Among  the  foremost  of  these  questions  were  three: 
"  Whence  came  language  ? "  "  Which  was  the  first  lan- 
guage?"    "How  came  the  diversity  of  language?" 

The  answer  to  the  first  of  these  was  very  simple :  each 
people  naturally  held  that  language  was  given  it  directly  or 
indirectly  by  some  special  or  national  deity  of  its  own  ;  thus, 

168 


THE    SACRED   THEORY   IN    ITS   FIRST   FORM. 


169 


to  the  Chaldeans  by  Oannes,  to  the  Egyptians  by  Thoth,  to 
the  Hebrews  by  Jahveh. 

The  Hebrew  answer  is  embodied  in  the  great  poem 
which  opens  our  sacred  books.  Jahveh  talks  with  Adam 
and  is  perfectly  understood  ;  the  serpent  talks  with  Eve  and 
is  perfectly  understood  ;  Jahveh  brings  the  animals  before 
Adam,  who  bestows  on  each  its  name.  Language,  then,  was 
God-given  and  complete.  Of  the  fact  that  every  language 
is  the  result  of  a  growth  process  there  was  evidently,  among 
the  compilers  of  our  sacred  books,  no  suspicion. 

The  answer  to  the  second  of  these  questions  was  no  less 
simple.  As,  very  generally,  each  nation  believed  its  own 
chief  divinity  to  be  "a  god  above  all  gods," — as  each  believed 
itself  "  a  chosen  people," — as  each  believed  its  own  sacred 
city  the  actual  centre  of  the  earth,  so  each  believed  its  own 
language  to  be  the  first — the  original  of  all.  This  answer  was 
from  the  first  taken  for  granted  by  each  "  chosen  people," 
and  especially  by  the  Hebrews:  throughout  their  whole  his- 
tory, whether  the  Almighty  talks  with  Adam  in  the  Garden 
or  writes  the  commandments  on  Mount  Sinai,  he  uses  the 
same  language — the  Hebrew. 

The  answer  to  the  third  of  these  questions,  that  regard- 
ing the  diversity  of  languages,  was  much  more  difficult. 
Naturally,  explanations  of  this  diversity  frequently  gave  rise 
to  legends  somewhat  complicated. 

The  "  law  of  wills  and  causes,"  formulated  by  Comte,  was 
exemplified  here  as  in  so  many  other  cases.  That  law  is, 
that,  when  men  do  not  know  the  natural  causes  of  things, 
they  simply  attribute  them  to  wills  like  their  own  ;  thus  they 
obtain  a  theory  which  provisionally  takes  the  place  of  sci- 
ence, and  this  theory  forms  a  basis  for  theology. 

Examples  of  this  recur  to  any  thinking  reader  of  history. 
Before  the  simpler  laws  of  astronomy  were  known,  the  sun 
was  supposed  to  be  trundled  out  into  the  heavens  every  day 
and  the  stars  hung  up  in  the  firmament  every  night  by  the 
right  hand  of  the  Almighty .  Before  the  laws  of  comets  were 
known,  they  were  thought  to  be  missiles  hurled  by  an  angry 
God  at  a  wicked  world.  Before  the  real  cause  of  lightning 
was  known,  it  was  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  a  good  God 
in  his  wrath,  or  of  evil  spirits  in  their  malice.     Before  the 


!jO  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY. 

laws  of  meteorology  were  known,  it  was  thought  that  rains 
were  caused  by  the  Almighty  or  his  angels  opening  "  the 
windows  of  heaven  "  to  let  down  upon  the  earth  "  the  waters 
that  be  above  the  firmament."  Before  the  laws  governing 
physical  health  were  known,  diseases  were  supposed  to  re- 
sult from  the  direct  interposition  of  the  Almighty  or  of  Satan. 
Before  the  laws  governing  mental  health  were  known,  insan- 
ity was  generally  thought  to  be  diabolic  possession.  All 
these  early  conceptions  were  naturally  embodied  in  the  sa- 
cred books  of  the  world,  and  especially  in  our  own.* 

So,  in  this  case,  to  account  for  the  diversity  of  tongues, 
the  direct  intervention  of  the  Divine  Will  was  brought  in. 
As  this  diversity  was  felt  to  be  an  inconvenience,  it  was  at- 
tributed to  the  will  of  a  Divine  Being  in  anger.  To  explain 
this  anger,  it  was  held  that  it  must  have  been  provoked  by 
human  sin. 

Out  of  this  conception  explanatory  myths  and  legends 
grew  as  thickly  and  naturally  as  elms  along  water-courses ; 
of  these  the  earliest  form  known  to  us  is  found  in  the  Chal- 
dean accounts,  and  nowhere  more  clearly  than  in  the  legend 
of  the  Tower  of  Babel. 

The  inscriptions  recently  found  among  the  ruins  of  As- 
syria have  thrown  a  bright  light  into  this  and  other  scriptural 
myths  and  legends:  the  deciphering  of  the  characters  in 
these  inscriptions  by  Grotefend,  and  the  reading  of  the  texts 
by  George  Smith,  Oppert,  Sayce,  and  others,  have  given  us 
these  traditions  more  nearly  in  their  original  form  than  they 
appear  in  our  own  Scriptures. 

The  Hebrew  story  of  Babel,  like  so  many  other  legends 
in  the  sacred  books  of  the  world,  combined  various  elements. 
By  a  play  upon  words,  such  as  the  history  of  myths  and 
legends  frequently  shows,  it  wrought  into  one  fabric  the  ear- 
lier explanations  of  the  diversities  of  human  speech  and  of 
the  great  ruined  tower  at  Babylon.  The  name  Babel  {bab-el) 
means  "  Gate  of  God  "  or  "  Gate  of  the  Gods."  All  modern 
scholars  of  note  agree  that  this  was  the  real  significance  of 

*  Any  one  who  wishes  to  realize  the  mediaeval  view  of  the  direct  personal  atten- 
tion of  the  Almighty  to  the  universe,  can  perhaps  do  so  most  easily  by  looking  over 
the  engravings  in  the  well-known  Nuremberg  Chronicle,  representing  him  in  the 
work  of  each  of  the  six  days,  and  resting  afterward. 


THE    SACRED   THEORY    IN    ITS   FIRST    FORM. 


I/I 


the  name;  but  the  Hebrew  verb  which  signifies  to  confound 
resembles  somewhat  the  word  Babel,  so  that  out  of  this  re- 
semblance, by  one  of  the  most  common  processes  in  myth 
formation,  came  to  the  Hebrew  mind  an  indisputable  proof 
that  the  tower  was  connected  with  the  confusion  of  tongues, 
and  this  became  part  of  our  theological  heritage, 

In  our  sacred  books  the  account  runs  as  follows : 

"  And  the  whole  earth  was  of  one  language,  and  of  one 
speech. 

"  And  it  came  to  pass,  as  they  journeyed  from  the  east, 
that  they  found  a  plain  in  the  land  of  Shinar  ;  and  they  dwelt 
there. 

"  And  they  said  one  to  another,  Go  to,  let  us  make  brick, 
and  burn  them  thoroughly.  And  they  had  brick  for  stone, 
and  slime  had  they  for  mortar. 

"  And  they  said,  Go  to,  let  us  build  us  a  city,  and  a  tower, 
whose  top  may  reach  unto  heaven  ;  and  let  us  make  us  a 
name,  lest  we  be  scattered  abroad  upon  the  face  of  the  whole 
earth. 

"  And  the  Lord  came  down  to  see  the  city  and  the  tower, 
which  the  children  of  men  builded. 

"And  the  Lord  said,  Behold,  the  people  is  one,  and  they 
have  all  one  language ;  and  this  they  begin  to  do :  and  now 
nothing  will  be  restrained  from  them,  which  they  have  im- 
agined to  do. 

"  Go  to,  let  us  go  down,  and  there  confound  their  lan- 
guage, that  they  may  not  understand  one  another's  speech. 

"  So  the  Lord  scattered  them  abroad  from  thence  upon 
the  face  of  all  the  earth  :  and  they  left  off  to  build  the  city. 

"  Therefore  is  the  name  of  it  called  Babel ;  because  the 
Lord  did  there  confound  the  language  of  all  the  earth :  and 
from  thence  did  the  Lord  scatter  them  abroad  upon  the  face 
of  all  the  earth."     (Genesis  xi,  1-9.) 

Thus  far  the  legend  had  been  but  slightly  changed  from 
the  earlier  Chaldean  form  in  which  it  has  been  found  in  the 
Assyrian  inscriptions.  Its  character  is  very  simple :  to  use 
the  words  of  Prof.  Sayce,  "  It  takes  us  back  to  the  age  when 
the  gods  were  believed  to  dwell  in  the  visible  sky,  and  when 
man,  therefore,  did  his  best  to  rear  his  altars  as  near  them 
as  possible."     And  this  eminent  divine  might   have  added 


\J2 


FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 


that  it  takes  us  back  also  to  a  time  when  it  was  thought  that 
Jehovah,  in  order  to  see  the  tower  fully,  was  obliged  to  come 
down  from  his  seat  above  the  firmament. 

As  to  the  real  reasons  for  the  building  of  the  towers 
which  formed  so  striking  a  feature  in  Chaldean  architecture 
— any  one  of  which  may  easily  have  given  rise  to  the  ex- 
planatory myth  which  found  its  way  into  our  sacred  books — 
there  seems  a  substantial  agreement  among  leading  scholars 
that  they  were  erected  primarily  as  parts  of  temples,  but 
largely  for  the  purpose  of  astronomical  observations,  to 
which  the  Chaldeans  were  so  devoted,  and  to  which  their 
country,  with  its  level  surface  and  clear  atmosphere,  was  so 
well  adapted.  As  to  the  real  cause  of  the  ruin  of  such  struc- 
tures, one  of  the  inscribed  cylinders  discovered  in  recent 
times,  speaking  of  a  tower  which  most  of  the  archaeologists 
identify  with  the  Tower  of  Babel,  reads  as  follows : 

"  The  building  named  the  Stages  of  the  Seven  Spheres, 
which  was  the  Tower  of  Borsippa,  had  been  built  by  a  for- 
mer king.  He  had  completed  forty-two  cubits,  but  he  did 
not  finish  its  head.  During  the  lapse  of  time,  it  had  become 
ruined ;  they  had  not  taken  care  of  the  exit  of  the  waters,  so 
that  rain  and  wet  had  penetrated  into  the  brickwork ;  the 
casing  of  burned  brick  had  swollen  out,  and  the  terraces  of 
crude  brick  are  scattered  in  heaps." 

We  can  well  understand  how  easily  "  the  gods,  assisted 
by  the  winds,"  as  stated  in  the  Chaldean  legend,  could  over- 
throw a  tower  thus  built. 

It  may  be  instructive  to  compare  with  the  explanatory 
myth  developed  first  by  the  Chaldeans,  and  in  a  slightly  dif- 
ferent form  by  the  Hebrews,  various  other  legends  to  ex- 
plain the  same  diversity  of  tongues.  The  Hindu  legend  of 
the  confusion  of  tongues  is  as  follows : 

"  There  grew  in  the  centre  of  the  earth  the  wonderful 
'  world  tree,'  or  '  knowledge  tree.'  It  was  so  tall  that  it 
reached  almost  to  heaven.  It  said  in  its  heart,  '  I  shall  hold 
my  head  in  heaven  and  spread  my  branches  over  all  the 
earth,  and  gather  all  men  together  under  my  shadow,  and 
protect  them,  and  prevent  them  from  separating.'  But 
Brahma,  to  punish  the  pride  of  the  tree,  cut  off  its  branches 
and  cast  them  down  on  the  earth,  when  they  sprang  up  as 


THE    SACRED    THEORY   IN    ITS   FIRST    FORM.  T  — 

wata  trees,  and  made  differences  of  belief  and  speech  and 
customs  to  prevail  on  the  earth,  to  disperse  men  upon  its 
surface." 

Still  more  striking  is  a  Mexican  legend  :  according  to 
this,  the  giant  Xelhua  built  the  great  Pyramid  of  Cholula,  in 
order  to  reach  heaven,  until  the  gods,  angry  at  his  audacity, 
threw  fire  upon  the  building  and  broke  it  clown,  whereupon 
every  separate  family  received  a  language  of  its  own. 

Such  explanatory  myths  grew  or  spread  widely  over  the 
earth.  A  well-known  form  of  the  legend,  more  like  the 
Chaldean  than  the  Hebrew  later  form,  appeared  among  the 
Greeks.  According  to  this,  the  Aloidas  piled  Mount  Ossa 
upon  Olympus  and  Pelion  upon  Ossa,  in  their  efforts  to 
reach  heaven  and  dethrone  Jupiter. 

Still  another  form  of  it  entered  the  thoughts  of  Plato. 
He  held  that  in  the  golden  age  men  and  beasts  all  spoke  the 
same  language,  but  that  Zeus  confounded  their  speech 
because  men  were  proud  and  demanded  eternal  youth  and 
immortality.* 

*  For  the  identification  of  the  Tower  of  Babel  with  the  "  Birs  Nimrud  "  amid 
the  ruins  of  the  city  of  Borsippa,  see  Rawlinson ;  also  Schrader,  The  Cuneiform 
Insctiptions  and  the  Old  Testament,  London,  1885,  pp.  106-112  and  following; 
and  especially  George  Smith,  Assyrian  Discoveries,  p.  59.  For  some  of  these 
inscriptions  discovered  and  read  by  George  Smith,  see  his  Chaldean  Account  of 
Genesis,  New  York,  1876,  pp.  160-162.  For  the  statement  regarding  the  origin  of 
the  word  Babel,  see  Ersch  and  Gruber,  article  Babylon  ;  also  the  Rev.  Prof.  A.  H. 
Sayce,  in  the  latest  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  ;  also  Colenso,  Penta- 
teuch Examined,  part  iv,  p.  302  ;  also  John  Fiske,  Myths  and  Myth-makers,  p.  72  ; 
also  Lenormant,  Histoire  Ancienne  de  I' Orient,  Paris,  1881,  vol.  i,  pp.  115  et  sea. 
As  to  the  character  and  purpose  of  the  great  tower  of  the  Temple  of  Belus,  see 
Smith's  Bible  Dictionary,  article  Babel,  quoting  Diodorus  ;  also  Rawlinson,  espe- 
cially in  Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Society  for  1861  ;  also  Sayce,  Religion  of  the  An- 
cient Babylonians  (Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887),  London,  1S77,  chap,  ii  and  else- 
where, especially  pp.  96,  397,  407;  also  Max  Duncker,  History  of  Antiquity,  Ab- 
bott's translation,  vol.  ii,  chaps,  ii  and  iii.  For  similar  legends  in  other  parts  of  the 
world,  see  Delitzsch ;  also  Humboldt,  American  Researches ;  also  Brinton,  Myths 
of  the  New  World;  also  Colenso,  as  above.  The  Tower  of  Cholula  is  well  known, 
having  been  described  by  Humboldt  and  Lord  Kingsborough.  For  superb  engrav- 
ings showing  the  view  of  Babel  as  developed  by  the  theological  imagination,  see 
Kircher,  Turris  Babel,  Amsterdam,  1679.  For  the  Law  of  Wills  and  Causes,  with 
deductions  from  it  well  stated,  see  Beattie  Crozier,  Civilization  and  Progress,  Lon- 
don, 1888,  pp.  112,  178,  179,  273.  For  Plato,  see  the  Politicus,  p.  272,  ed.  Stephani, 
cited  in  Ersch  and  Gruber,  article  Babylon.  For  a  good  general  statement,  see 
Bible  Myths,  New  York,  1SS3,  chap.  iii.     For  Aristotle's  strange  want  of  interest  in 


1^4  FROM   BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

But  naturally  the  version  of  the  legend  which  most  af- 
fected Christendom  was  that  modification  of  the  Chaldean 
form  developed  among-  the  Jews  and  embodied  in  their 
sacred  books.  To  a  thinking  man  in  these  days  it  is  very 
instructive.  The  coming  down  of  the  Almighty  from  heaven 
to  see  the  tower  and  put  an  end  to  it  by  dispersing  its  build- 
ers, points  to  the  time  when  his  dwelling  was  supposed  to  be 
just  above  the  firmament  or  solid  vault  above  the  earth  :  the 
time  when  he  exercised  his  beneficent  activity  in  such  acts 
as  opening  "  the  windows  of  heaven "  to  give  down  rain 
upon  the  earth  ;  in  bringing  out  the  sun  every  day  and  hang- 
ing up  the  stars  every  night  to  give  light  to  the  earth  ;  in 
hurling  comets,  to  give  warning ;  in  placing  his  bow  in  the 
cloud,  to  give  hope  ;  in  coming  down  in  the  cool  of  the  even- 
ing to  walk  and  talk  with  the  man  he  had  made  ;  in  making 
coats  of  skins  for  Adam  and  Eve  ;  in  enjoying  the  odour  of 
flesh  which  Noah  burned  for  him  ;  in  eating  with  Abraham 
under  the  oaks  of  Mamre ;  in  wrestling  with  Jacob;  and  in 
writing  with  his  own  finger  on  the  stone  tables  for  Moses. 

So  came  the  answer  to  the  third  question  regarding  lan- 
guage ;  and  all  three  answers,  embodied  in  our  sacred  books 
and  implanted  in  the  Jewish  mind,  supplied  to  the  Christian 
Church  the  germs  of  a  theological  development  of  philology. 
These  germs  developed  rapidly  in  the  warm  atmosphere 
of  devotion  and  ignorance  of  natural  law  which  pervaded 
the  early  Church,  and  there  grew  a  great  orthodox  theory 
of  language,  which  was  held  throughout  Christendom,  "  al- 
ways, everywhere,  and  by  all,"  for  nearly  two  thousand  years, 
and  to  which,  until  the  present  century,  all  science  has  been 
obliged,  under  pains  and  penalties,  to  conform. 

There  did,  indeed,  come  into  human  thought  at  an  early 
period  some  suggestions  of  the  modern  scientific  view  of 
philology.  Lucretius  had  proposed  a  theory,  inadequate  in- 
deed, but  still  pointing  toward  the  truth,  as  follows :  "  Na- 
ture impelled  man  to  try  the  various  sounds  of  the  tongue, 
and  so  struck  out  the  names  of  things,  much  in  the  same  way 
as  the  inability  to  speak  is  seen  in  its  turn  to  drive  children 

any  classification  of  the  varieties  of  human  speech,  see  Max  Miiller,  Lectures  on  the 
Science  of  Language,  London,  1864,  scries  i,  chap,  iv,  pp.  123-125. 


THE    SACRED   THEORY   IN   ITS   FIRST    FORM.  j-r 

to  the  use  of  gestures."  But,  among  the  early  fathers  of  the 
Church,  the  only  one  who  seems  to  have  caught  an  echo  of 
this  utterance  was  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa :  as  a  rule,  all  the 
other  great  founders  of  Christian  theology,  as  far  as  they  ex- 
pressed themselves  on  the  subject,  took  the  view  that  the 
original  language  spoken  by  the  Almighty  and  given  by  him 
to  men  was  Hebrew,  and  that  from  this  all  other  lansruacres 
were  derived  at  the  destruction  of  the  Tower  of  Babel. 
This  doctrine  was  especially  upheld  by  Origen,  St.  Jerome, 
and  St.  Augustine.  Origen  taught  that  "  the  language  given 
at  the  first  through  Adam,  the  Hebrew,  remained  among 
that  portion  of  mankind  which  was  assigned  not  to  any  an- 
gel, but  continued  the  portion  of  God  himself."  St.  Augus- 
tine declared  that,  when  the  other  races  were  divided  by 
their  own  peculiar  languages,  Heber's  family  preserved  that 
language  which  is  not  unreasonably  believed  to  have  been 
the  common  language  of  the  race,  and  that  on  this  account 
it  was  henceforth  called  Hebrew.  St.  Jerome  wrote,  "  The 
whole  of  antiquity  affirms  that  Hebrew,  in  which  the  Old 
Testament  is  written,  was  the  beginning  of  all  human 
speech." 

Amid  such  great  authorities  as  these  even  Gregory  of 
Nyssa  struggled  in  vain.  He  seems  to  have  taken  the  mat- 
ter very  earnestly,  and  to  have  used  not  only  argument  but 
ridicule.  He  insists  that  God  does  not  speak  Hebrew,  and 
that  the  tongue  used  by  Moses  was  not  even  a  pure  dialect 
of  one  of  the  languages  resulting  from  "  the  confusion."  He 
makes  man  the  inventor  of  speech,  and  resorts  to  raillery : 
speaking  against  his  opponent  Eunomius,  he  says  that,  "  pass- 
ing in  silence  his  base  and  abject  garrulity,"  he  will  "  note  a 
few  things  which  are  thrown  into  the  midst  of  his  useless  or 
wordy  discourse,  where  he  represents  God  teaching  words 
and  names  to  our  first  parents,  sitting  before  them  like  some 
pedagogue  or  grammar  master."  But,  naturally,  the  great 
authority  of  Origen,  Jerome,  and  Augustine  prevailed  ;  the 
view  suggested  by  Lucretius,  and  again  by  St.  Gregory  of 
Nyssa,  died  out;  and  "  always,  every  where,  and  by  all,"  in 
the  Church,  the  doctrine  was  received  that  the  language 
spoken  by  the  Almighty  was  Hebrew, — that  it  was  taught 
by  him  to  Adam, — and  that  all  other  languages  on  the  face 


I76  FROM   BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

of  the  earth  originated  from  it  at  the  dispersion  attending 
the  destruction  of  the  Tower  of  Babel.* 

This  idea  threw  out  roots  and  branches  in  every  direc- 
tion, and  so  developed  ever  into  new  and  strong  forms.  As 
all  scholars  now  know,  the  vowel  points  in  the  Hebrew  lan- 
guage were  not  adopted  until  at  some  period  between  the 
second  and  tenth  centuries ;  but  in  the  mediaeval  Church 
they  soon  came  to  be  considered  as  part  of  the  great  miracle 
— as  the  work  of  the  right  hand  of  the  Almighty ;  and  never 
until  the  eighteenth  century  was  there  any  doubt  allowed  as 
to  the  divine  origin  of  these  rabbinical  additions  to  the  text. 
To  hesitate  in  believing  that  these  points  were  dotted  virtu- 
ally by  the  very  hand  of  God  himself  came  to  be  considered 
a  fearful  heresy. 

The  series  of  battles  between  theology  and  science  in  the 
field  of  comparative  philology  opened  just  on  this  point, 
apparently  so  insignificant :  the  direct  divine  inspiration  of 
the  rabbinical  punctuation.  The  first  to  impugn  this  divine 
origin  of  these  vocal  points  and  accents  appears  to  have  been 
a  Spanish  monk,  Raymundus  Martinus,  in  his  Pugio  Fidei,  or 
Poniard  of  the  Faith,  which  he  put  forth  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  But  he  and  his  doctrine  disappeared  beneath  the 
waves  of  the  orthodox  ocean,  and  apparently  left  no  trace. 
For  nearly  three  hundred  years  longer  the  full  sacred  theory 
held  its  ground  ;  but  about  the  opening  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury another  glimpse  of  the  truth  was  given  by  a  Jew,  Elias 
Levita,  and  this  seems  to  have  had  some  little  effect,  at  least 
in  keeping  the  germ  of  scientific  truth  alive. 

The  Reformation,  with  its  renewal  of  the  literal  study  of 


*  For  Lucretius's  statement,  see  the  De  Rerum  Natura,  lib.  v,  Munro's  edition, 
with  translation,  Cambridge,  1886,  vol.  iii,  p.  141-  For  the  opinion  of  Gregory  of 
Nyssa,  see  Benfey,  Geschichte  der  Sprachwissenschaft  in  Deutschland,  Miinchen, 
1S69,  p.  179  ;  and  for  the  passage  cited,  see  Gregory  of  Nyssa  in  his  Contra  Euno- 
mium,  xii,  in  Migne's  Patr.  Grmca,  vol.  ii,  p.  1043.  For  St.  Jerome,  see  his  Epistle 
XVIII,  in  Migne's  Patr.  Lat.,  vol.  xxii,  p.  365.  For  citation  from  St.  Augustine, 
see  the  City  of  God,  Dods's  translation,  Edinburgh,  1871,  vol.  ii,  p.  122.  For  cita- 
tion from  Origen,  see  his  Homily  XI,  cited  by  Guichard  in  preface  to  L ' Harmonie 
Etymologique,  Paris,  1631,  lib.  xvi,  chap.  xi.  For  absolutely  convincing  proofs  that 
the  Jews  derived  the  Babel  and  other  legends  of  their  sacred  books  from  the  Chal- 
deans, see  George  Smith,  Chaldean  Account  of  Genesis,  passim  ;  but  especially  for 
a  most  candid  though  evidently  somewhat  reluctant  summing  up,  see  p.  291. 


THE   SACRED   THEORY   IN    ITS   FIRST    FORM.  iyy 

the  Scriptures,  and  its  transfer  of  all  infallibility  from  the 
Church  and  the  papacy  to  the  letter  of  the  sacred  books, 
intensified  for  a  time  the  devotion  of  Christendom  to  this 
sacred  theory  of  language.  The  belief  was  strongly  held 
that  the  writers  of  the  Bible  were  merely  pens  in  the  hand 
of  God  {Dei  calami) ;  hence  the  conclusion  that  not  only  the 
sense  but  the  words,  letters,  and  even  the  punctuation  pro- 
ceeded from  the  Holy  Spirit.  Only  on  this  one  question  of 
the  origin  of  the  Hebrew  points  was  there  any  controversy, 
and  this  waxed  hot.  It  began  to  be  especially  noted  that 
these  vowel  points  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  did  not  exist  in  the 
synagogue  rolls,  were  not  mentioned  in  the  Talmud,  and 
seemed  unknown  to  St.  Jerome ;  and  on  these  grounds  some 
earnest  men  ventured  to  think  them  no  part  of  the  original 
revelation  to  Adam.  Zwingli,  so  much  before  most  of  the 
Reformers  in  other  respects,  was  equally  so  in  this.  While 
not  doubting  the  divine  origin  and  preservation  of  the 
Hebrew  language  as  a  whole,  he  denied  the  antiquity  of 
the  vocal  points,  demonstrated  their  unessential  character, 
and  pointed  out  the  fact  that  St.  Jerome  makes  no  mention 
of  them.  His  denial  was  long  the  refuge  of  those  who 
shared  this  heresy. 

But  the  full  orthodox  theory  remained  established  among 
the  vast  majority  both  of  Catholics  and  Protestants.  The 
attitude  of  the  former  is  well  illustrated  in  the  imposing 
work  of  the  canon  Marini,  which  appeared  at  Venice  in  1593, 
under  the  title  of  Noatis  Ark :  A  New  Treasury  of  the  Sacred 
Tongue.  The  huge  folios  begin  with  the  declaration  that  the 
Hebrew  tongue  was  "  divinely  inspired  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  world,"  and  the  doctrine  is  steadily  maintained 
that  this  divine  inspiration  extended  not  only  to  the  letters 
but  to  the  punctuation. 

Not  before  the  seventeenth  century  was  well  under  way 
do  we  find  a  thorough  scholar  bold  enough  to  gainsay  this 
preposterous  doctrine.  This  new  assailant  was  Capellus, 
Professor  of  Hebrew  at  Saumur;  but  he  dared  not  put  forth 
his  argument  in  France:  he  was  obliged  to  publish  it  in 
Holland,  and  even  there  such  obstacles  were  thrown  in  his 
way  that  it  was  ten  years  before  he  published  another 
treatise  of  importance. 
40 


j78         from  babel  to  comparative  philology. 

The  work  of  Capellus  was  received  as  settling  the  ques- 
tion by  very  many  open-minded  scholars,  among  whom  was 
Hugo  Grotius.  But  many  theologians  felt  this  view  to  be  a 
blow  at  the  sanctity  and  integrity  of  the  sacred  text ;  and  in 
1648  the  great  scholar,  John  Buxtorf  the  younger,  rose  to 
defend  the  orthodox  citadel:  in  his  Anticritica  he  brought 
all  his  stores  of  knowledge  to  uphold  the  doctrine  that  the 
rabbinical  points  and  accents  had  been  jotted  down  by  the 
right  hand  of  God. 

The  controversy  waxed  hot :  scholars  like  Voss  and  Brian 
Walton  supported  Capellus ;  Wasmuth  and  many  others  of 
note  were  as  fierce  against  him.  The  Swiss  Protestants  were 
especially  violent  on  the  orthodox  side  ;  their  formula  con- 
sensus of  1675  declared  the  vowel  points  to  be  inspired,  and 
three  years  later  the  Calvinists  of  Geneva,  by  a  special  canon, 
forbade  that  any  minister  should  be  received  into  their  juris- 
diction until  he  publicly  confessed  that  the  Hebrew  text,  as 
it  to-day  exists  in  the  Masoretic  copies,  is,  both  as  to  the 
consonants  and  vowel  points,  divine  and  authentic. 

While  in  Holland  so  great  a  man  as  Hugo  Grotius  sup- 
ported the  view  of  Capellus,  and  while  in  France  the  eminent 
Catholic  scholar  Richard  Simon,  and  many  others,  Catholic 
and  Protestant,  took  similar  ground  against  this  divine  origin 
of  the  Hebrew  punctuation,  there  was  arrayed  against  them 
a  body  apparently  overwhelming.  In  France,  Bossuet,  the 
greatest  theologian  that  France  has  ever  produced,  did  his 
best  to  crush  Simon.  In  Germany,  Wasmuth,  professor  first 
at  Rostock  and  afterward  at  Kiel,  hurled  his  Vindicice  at  the 
innovators.  Yet  at  this  very  moment  the  battle  was  clearly 
won ;  the  arguments  of  Capellus  were  irrefragable,  and,  de- 
spite the  commands  of  bishops,  the  outcries  of  theologians, 
and  the  sneering  of  critics,  his  application  of  strictly  scien- 
tific observation  and  reasoning  carried  the  day. 

Yet  a  casual  observer,  long  after  the  fate  of  the  battle 
was  really  settled,  might  have  supposed  that  it  was  still  in 
doubt.  As  is  not  unusual  in  theologic  controversies,  attempts 
were  made  to  galvanize  the  dead  doctrine  into  an  appear- 
ance of  life.  Famous  among  these  attempts  was  that  made 
as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  by  two 
Bremen  theologians,  Hase  and  Iken.    They  put  forth  a  com- 


SACRED    THEORY    OF    LANGUAGE    IN    ITS   SECOND   FORM.   i;q 

pilation  in  two  huge  folios  simultaneously  at  Leyden  and 
Amsterdam,  prominent  in  which  work  is  the  treatise  on  The 
Integrity  of  Scripture,  by  Johann  Andreas  Danzius,  Professor 
of  Oriental  Languages  and  Senior  Member  of  the  Philo- 
sophical Faculty  of  Jena,  and,  to  preface  it,  there  was  a 
formal  and  fulsome  approval  by  three  eminent  professors  of 
theology  at  Leyden.  With  great  fervour  the  author  pointed 
out  that  "  religion  itself  depends  absolutely  on  the  infallible 
inspiration,  both  verbal  and  literal,  of  the  Scripture  text "  ; 
and  with  impassioned  eloquence  he  assailed  the  blasphemers 
who  dared  question  the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew  points. 
But  this  was  really  the  last  great  effort.  That  the  case  was 
lost  was  seen  by  the  fact  that  Danzius  felt  obliged  to  use 
other  missiles  than  arguments,  and  especially  to  call  his 
opponents  hard  names.  From  this  period  the  old  sacred 
theory  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Hebrew  points  may  be  con- 
sidered as  dead  and  buried. 

II.   THE   SACRED   THEORY   OF   LANGUAGE    IN    ITS   SECOND 

FORM. 

But  the  war  was  soon  to  be  waged  on  a  wider  and  far 
more  important  field.  The  inspiration  of  the  Hebrew  punc- 
tuation having  been  given  up,  the  great  orthodox  body  fell 
back  upon  the  remainder  of  the  theory,  and  intrenched  this 
more  strongly  than  ever:  the  theory  that  the  Hebrew  lan- 
guage was  the  first  of  all  languages— that  which  was  spoken 
by  the  Almighty,  given  by  him  to  Adam,  transmitted  through 
Noah  to  the  world  after  the  Deluge— and  that  the  "  confusion 
of  tongues  "  was  the  origin  of  all  other  languages. 

In  giving  account  of  this  new  phase  of  the  struggle,  it  is 
well  to  go  back  a  little.  From  the  Revival  of  Learning  and 
the  Reformation  had  come  the  renewed  study  of  Hebrew  in 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and  thus  the  sacred 
doctrine  regarding  the  origin  of  the  Hebrew  language  re- 
ceived additional  authority.  All  the  early  Hebrew  gram- 
mars, from  that  of  Reuchlin  down,  assert  the  divine  origin 
and  miraculous  claims  of  Hebrew.  It  is  constantly  men- 
tioned as  "the  sacred  tongue " — sancta  lingua.  In  1506, 
Reuchlin,  though  himself  persecuted   by  a  large  faction  in 


iSo  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

the  Church  for  advanced  views,  refers  to  Hebrew  as 
"spoken  by  the  mouth  of  God." 

This  idea  was  popularized  by  the  edition  of  the  Margarita 
Philosophica,  published  at  Strasburg  in  1508.  That  work,  in 
its  successive  editions  a  mirror  of  human  knowledge  at  the 
close  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  opening  of  modern  times, 
contains  a  curious  introduction  to  the  study  of  Hebrew.  In 
this  it  is  declared  that  Hebrew  was  the  original  speech 
"  used  between  God  and  man  and  between  men  and  angels." 
Its  full-page  frontispiece  represents  Moses  receiving  from 
God  the  tables  of  stone  written  in  Hebrew  ;  and,  as  a  con- 
clusive argument,  it  reminds  us  that  Christ  himself,  by 
choosing  a  Hebrew  maid  for  his  mother,  made  that  his 
mother  tongue. 

It  must  be  noted  here,  however,  that  Luther,  in  one  of 
those  outbursts  of  strong  sense  which  so  often  appear  in  his 
career,  enforced  the  explanation  that  the  words  "  God  said  " 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  articulation  of  human  language. 
Still,  he  evidently  yielded  to  the  general  view.  In  the 
Roman  Church  at  the  same  period  we  have  a  typical  ex- 
ample of  the  theologic  method  applied  to  philology,  as  we 
have  seen  it  applied  to  other  sciences,  in  the  statement  by 
Luther's  great  opponent,  Cajetan,  that  the  three  languages 
of  the  inscription  on  the  cross  of  Calvary  "  were  the  repre- 
sentatives of  all  languages,  because  the  number  three  denotes 
perfection." 

In  1538  Postillus  made  a  very  important  endeavour  at  a 
comparative  study  of  languages,  but  with  the  orthodox  as- 
sumption that  all  were  derived  from  one  source,  namely,  the 
Hebrew.  Naturally,  Comparative  Philology  blundered  and 
stumbled  along  this  path  into  endless  absurdities.  The  most 
amazing  efforts  were  made  to  trace  back  everything  to  the 
sacred  language.  English  and  Latin  dictionaries  appeared, 
in  which  every  word  was  traced  back  to  a  Hebrew  root. 
No  supposition  was  too  absurd  in  this  attempt  to  square 
Science  with  Scripture.  It  was  declared  that,  as  Hebrew 
is  written  from  right  to  left,  it  might  be  read  either  way,  in 
order  to  produce  a  satisfactory  etymology.  The  whole  effort 
in  all  this  sacred  scholarship  was,  not  to  find  what  the  truth 
is — not  to  see  how  the  various  languages  are  to  be  classified, 


SACRED    THEORY   OF   LANGUAGE   IN   ITS   SECOND    FORM,    jgi 

or  from  what  source  they  are  really  derived — but  to  demon- 
strate what  was  supposed  necessary  to  maintain  what  was 
then  held  to  be  the  truth  of  Scripture ;  namely,  that  all  lan- 
guages are  derived  from  the  Hebrew. 

This  stumbling  and  blundering,  under  the  sway  of  ortho- 
dox necessity,  was  seen  among  the  foremost  scholars  through- 
out Europe.  About  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  the 
great  Swiss  scholar,  Conrad  Gesner,  beginning  his  Mithridates, 
says,  "  While  of  all  languages  Hebrew  is  the  first  and  oldest, 
of  all  is  alone  pure  and  unmixed,  all  the  rest  are  much  mixed, 
for  there  is  none  which  has  not  some  words  derived  and  cor- 
rupted from  Hebrew." 

Typical,  as  we  approach  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, are  the  utterances  of  two  of  the  most  noted  English 
divines.  First  of  these  may  be  mentioned  Dr.  William  Fulke, 
Master  of  Pembroke  Hall,  in  the  University  of  Cambridge. 
In  his  Discovery  of  the  Dangerous  Rock  of  the  Romish  Ckurck, 
published  in  1580,  he  speaks  of  "the  Hebrew  tongue,  .  .  . 
the  first  tongue  of  the  world,  and  for  the  excellency  thereof 
called  '  the  holy  tongue.'  " 

Yet  more  emphatic,  eight  years  later,  was  another  emi- 
nent divine,  Dr.  William  Whitaker,  Regius  Professor  of  Di- 
vinity and  Master  of  St.  John's  College  at  Cambridge.  In  his 
Disputation  on  Holy  Scripture,  first  printed  in  1588,  he  says: 
"  The  Hebrew  is  the  most  ancient  of  all  languages,  and  was 
that  which  alone  prevailed  in  the  world  before  the  Deluge 
and  the  erection  of  the  Tower  of  Babel.  For  it  was  this 
which  Adam  used  and  all  men  before  the  Flood,  as  is  mani- 
fest from  the  Scriptures,  as  the  fathers  testify."  He  then 
proceeds  to  quote  passages  on  this  subject  from  St.  Jerome, 
St.  Augustine,  and  others,  and  cites  St.  Chrysostom  in  sup- 
port of  the  statement  that  "  God  himself  showed  the  model 
and  method  of  writing  when  he  delivered  the  Law  written 
by  his  own  finger  to  Moses."  * 

*  For  the  whole  scriptural  argument,  embracing  the  various  texts  on  which  the 
sacred  science  of  Philology  was  founded,  with  the  use  made  of  such  texts,  see  Ben- 
fey,  Geschichte  der  Sprachwissenschaft  in  Dentschland,  Miinchen,  1S69,  pp.  22-26. 
As  to  the  origin  of  the  vowel  points,  see  Benfey,  as  above  :  he  holds  that  they  be- 
gan to  be  inserted  in  the  second  century  A.  D.,  and  that  the  process  lasted  until 
about  the  tenth.    For  Raymundus  and  his  Pugio  Fidci,  see  G.  L.  Bauer,  Prolegomena 


!82  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

This  sacred  theory  entered  the  seventeenth  century  in 
full  force,  and  for  a  time  swept  everything  before  it.  Emi- 
nent commentators,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  accepted  and 
developed  it.  Great  prelates,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  stood 
guard  over  it,  favouring  those  who  supported  it,  doing  their 
best  to  destroy  those  who  would  modify  it. 

In  1606  Stephen  Guichard  built  new  buttresses  for  it  in 
Catholic  France.  He  explains  in  his  preface  that  his  inten- 
tion is  "  to  make  the  reader  see  in  the  Hebrew  word  not 


to  his  revision  of  Glassius's  Philologia  Sacra,  Leipsic,  1795, — see  especially  pp.  8- 
14,  in  tome  ii  of  the  work.  For  Zwingli,  see  Praef.  in  Apol.  comp.  Isaice  (Opera, 
iii).  See  also  Morinus,  De  Lingua  primceva,  p.  447.  For  Marini,  see  his  Area 
Noe :  Thesaurus  Lingua  Sanctce,  Venet.,  1593,  and  especially  the  preface.  For 
general  account  of  Capellus,  see  G.  L.  Bauer,  in  his  Prolegomena,  as  above,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  8-14.  His  Arcanum  Premetationis  Revelatum  was  brought  out  at  Leyden  in 
1624  ;  his  Critica  Sacra  ten  years  later.  See  on  Capellus  and  Swiss  theologues, 
Wolfius,  Bibliotheca  Nebr.,  tome  ii,  p.  27.  For  the  struggle,  see  Schnedermann, 
Die  Controverse  des  Ludovicus  Capellus  mil  den  Buxtorfen,  Leipsic,  1879,  cited 
in  article  Hebrew,  in  Encyclopaedia  Britannica.  For  Wasmuth,  see  his  Vindicice 
Sanctce  Hebraicce  Scriptures,  Rostock,  1664.  For  Reuchlin,  see  the  dedicatory 
preface  to  his  Rudimenta  Hebraica,  Pforzheim,  1506,  folio,  in  which  he  speaks  of  the 
"in  divina  scriptura  dicendi  genus,  quale  os  Dei  locutum  est."  The  statement  in 
the  Margarita  Philosophica  as  to  Hebrew  is  doubtless  based  on  Reuchlin's  Rudi- 
menta Hebraica,  which  it  quotes,  and  which  first  appeared  in  1506.  It  is  significant 
that  this  section  disappeared  from  the  Margarita  in  the  following  editions  ;  but 
this  disappearance  is  easily  understood  when  we  recall  the  fact  that  Gregory  Reysch, 
its  author,  having  become  one  of  the  Papal  Commission  to  judge  Reuchlin  in  his 
quarrel  with  the  Dominicans,  thought  it  prudent  to  side  with  the  latter,  and  there- 
fore, doubtless,  considered  it  wise  to  suppress  all  evidence  of  Reuchlin's  influence 
upon  his  beliefs.  All  the  other  editions  of  the  Margarita  in  my  possession  are  con- 
tent with  teaching,  under  the  head  of  the  Alphabet,  that  the  Hebrew  letters  were 
invented  by  Adam.  On  Luther's  view  of  the  words  "God  said,"  see  Farrar,  Lan- 
guage and  Languages.  For  a  most  valuable  statement  regarding  the  clashing  opin- 
ions at  the  Reformation,  see  Max  Miiller,  as  above,  lecture  iv,  p.  132.  For  the 
prevailing  view  among  the  Reformers,  see  Calovius,  vol.  i,  p.  484,  and  Tholuck,  The 
Doctrine  of  Inspiration,  in  Theolog.  Essays,  Boston,  1867.  Both  Miiller  and  Ben- 
fey  note,  as  especially  important,  the  difference  between  the  Church  view  and  the 
ancient  heathen  view  regarding  "  barbarians."  See  Miiller,  as  above,  lecture  iv, 
p.  127,  and  Benfey,  as  above,  pp.  170  et  sea.  For  a  very  remarkable  list  of  Bibles 
printed  at  an  early  period,  see  Benfey,  p.  569.  On  the  attempts  to  trace  all  words 
back  to  Hebrew  roots,  see  Sayce,  Lntroduction  to  the  Science  of  Language,  chap, 
vi.  For  Gesner,  see  his  Mithridates  (de  differentiis  linguarum),  Zurich,  1555.  For 
a  similar  attempt  to  prove  that  Italian  was  also  derived  from  Hebrew,  see  Giam- 
bullari,  cited  in  Garlanda,  p.  174.  For  Fulke,  see  the  Parker  Society's  Publica- 
tions, 184S,  p.  224.  For  Whitaker,  see  his  Disputation  on  Holy  Scripture  in  the 
same  series,  pp.  112-114. 


SACRED    THEORY   OF   LANGUAGE    IN    ITS   SECOND    FORM.   183 

only  the  Greek  and  Latin,  but  also  the  Italian,  the  Spanish, 
the  French,  the  German,  the  Flemish,  the  English,  and  many 
others  from  all  languages."  As  the  merest  tyro  in  philology 
can  now  see,  the  great  difficulty  that  Guichard  encounters 
is  in  o-etting  from  the  Hebrew  to  the  Aryan  group  of  lan- 
guages. How  he  meets  this  difficulty  may  be  imagined  from 
his  statement,  as  follows :  "  As  for  the  derivation  of  words 
by  addition,  subtraction,  and  inversion  of  the  letters,  it  is 
certain  that  this  can  andjDught  thus  to  be  done,  if  we  would 
find  etymologies — a  thing  which  becomes  very  credible  when 
we  consider  that  the  Hebrews  wrote  from  right  to  left  and 
the  Greeks  and  others  from  left  to  right.  All  the  learned 
recognise  such  derivations  as  necessary  ;  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  cer- 
tainly otherwise  one  could  scarcely  trace  any  etymology 
back  to  Hebrew." 

Of  course,  by  this  method  of  philological  juggling,  any- 
thing could  be  proved  which  the  author  thought  necessary 
to  his  pious  purpose. 

Two  years  later,  Andrew  Willett  published  at  London 
his  Hexapla,  or  Sixfold  Commentary  upon  Genesis.  In  this  he 
insists  that  the  one  language  of  all  mankind  in  the  beginning 
"was  the  Hebrew  tongue  preserved  still  in  Heber's  family." 
He  also  takes  pains  to  say  that  the  Tower  of  Babel  "  was 
not  so  called  of  Belus,  as  some  have  imagined,  but  of  con- 
fusion, for  so  the  Hebrew  word  ballal  signifieth  "  ;  and  he 
quotes  from  St.  Chrysostom  to  strengthen  his  position. 

In  1627  Dr.  Constantine  l'Empereur  was  inducted  into 
the  chair  of  Philosophy  of  the  Sacred  Language  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Leyden.  In  his  inaugural  oration  on  The  Dignity 
and  Utility  of  the  Hebrew  Tongue,  he  puts  himself  on  record 
in  favour  of  the  Divine  origin  and  miraculous  purity  of  that 
language.  "  Who,"  he  says,  "  can  call  in  question  the  fact 
that  the  Hebrew  idiom  is  coeval  with  the  world  itself,  save 
such  as  seek  to  win  vainglory  for  their  own  sophistry  ?  " 

Two  years  after  Willett,  in  England,  comes  the  famous 
Dr.  Lightfoot,  the  most  renowned  scholar  of  his  time  in 
Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin  ;  but  all  his  scholarship  was  bent 
to  suit  theological  requirements.  In  his  Erubhin,  published 
in  1629,  he  goes  to  the  full  length  of  the  sacred  theory, 
thouo-h  we  begin  to  see  a  curious  endeavour  to  get  over 


1 84 


FROM    BABEL    TO    COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 


some  linguistic  difficulties.  One  passage  will  serve  to  show 
both  the  robustness  of  his  faith  and  the  acuteness  of  his  rea- 
soning:, in  view  of  the  difficulties  which  scholars  now  be^an 
to  find  in  the  sacred  theory :  "  Other  commendations  this 
tongue  (Hebrew)  needeth  none  than  what  it  hath  of  itself ; 
namely,  for  sanctity  it  was  the  tongue  of  God  ;  and  for  an- 
tiquity it  was  the  tongue  of  Adam.  God  the  first  founder, 
and  Adam  the  first  speaker  of  it.  .  .  .  It  began  with  the 
world  and  the  Church,  and  continued  and  increased  in  glory 
till  the  captivity  in  Babylon.  .  .  .  As  the  man  in  Seneca, 
that  through  sickness  lost  his  memory  and  forgot  his  own 
name,  so  the  Jews,  for  their  sins,  lost  their  language  and  for- 
got their  own  tongue.  .  .  .  Before  the  confusion  of  tongues 
all  the  world  spoke  their  tongue  and  no  other ;  but  since 
the  confusion  of  the  Jews  they  speak  the  language  of  all 
the  world  and  not  their  own." 

But  just  at  the  middle  of  the  century  (1657)  came  in  Eng- 
land a  champion  of  the  sacred  theory  more  important  than 
any  of  these — Brian  Walton,  Bishop  of  Chester.  His  Poly- 
glot Bible  dominated  English  scriptural  criticism  throughout 
the  remainder  of  the  century.  He  prefaces  his  great  work 
by  proving  at  length  the  divine  origin  of  Hebrew,  and  the 
derivation  from  it  of  all  other  forms  of  speech.  He  declares 
it  "  probable  that  the  first  parent  of  mankind  was  the  in- 
ventor of  letters."  His  chapters  on  this  subject  are  full  of 
interesting  details.  He  says  that  the  Welshman,  Davis,  had 
already  tried  to  prove  the  Welsh  the  primitive  speech ; 
Wormius,  the  Danish ;  Mitilerius,  the  German ;  but  the 
bishop  stands  firmly  by  the  sacred  theory,  informing  us  that 
"  even  in  the  New  World  are  found  traces  of  the  Hebrew 
tongue,  namely,  in  New  England  and  in  New  Belgium, 
where  the  word  Agnarda  signifies  earth,  and  the  name  Joseph 
is  found  among  the  Hurons."  As  we  have  seen,  Bishop 
Walton  had  been  forced  to  give  up  the  inspiration  of  the 
rabbinical  punctuation,  but  he  seems  to  have  fallen  back  with 
all  the  more  tenacity  on  what  remained  of  the  great  sacred 
theory  of  language,  and  to  have  become  its  leading  cham- 
pion among  English-speaking  peoples. 

At  that  same  period  the  same  doctrine  was  put  forth  by 
a  great  authority  in  Germany.      In   1657  Andreas  Sennert 


SACRED    THEORY   OF   LANGUAGE   IN    ITS   SECOND   FORM.   185 

published  his  inaugural  address  as  Professor  of  Sacred  Let- 
ters and  Dean  of  the  Theological  Faculty  at  Wittenberg. 
All  his  efforts  were  given  to  making  Luther's  old  university 
a  fortress  of  the  orthodox  theory.  His  address,  like  many 
others  in  various  parts  of  Europe,  shows  that  in  his  time  an 
inaugural  with  any  save  an  orthodox  statement  of  the  theo- 
logical platform  would  not  be  tolerated.  Few  things  in  the 
past  are  to  the  sentimental  mind  more  pathetic,  to  the  philo- 
sophical mind  more  natural,  and  to  the  progressive  mind 
more  ludicrous,  than  addresses  at  high  festivals  of  theo- 
logical schools.  The  audience  has  generally  consisted  mainly 
of  estimable  elderly  gentlemen,  who  received  their  theology 
in  their  youth,  and  who  in  their  old  age  have  watched  over 
it  with  jealous  care  to  keep  it  well  protected  from  every 
fresh  breeze  of  thought.  Naturally,  a  theological  professor 
inaugurated  under  such  auspices  endeavours  to  propitiate 
his  audience.  Sennert  goes  to  great  lengths  both  in  his 
address  and  in  his  grammar,  published  nine  years  later ;  for, 
declaring  the  Divine  origin  of  Hebrew  to  be  quite  beyond 
controversy,  he  says:  "  Noah  received  it  from  our  first  par- 
ents, and  guarded  it  in  the  midst  of  the  waters ;  Heber  and 
Peleg  saved  it  from  the  confusion  of  tongues." 

The  same  doctrine  was  no  less  loudly  insisted  upon  by 
the  greatest  authority  in  Switzerland,  Buxtorf,  professor  at 
Basle,  who  proclaimed  Hebrew  to  be  "  the  tongue  of  God, 
the  tongue  of  angels,  the  tongue  of  the  prophets  "  ;  and  the 
effect  of  this  proclamation  may  be  imagined  when  we  note 
in  1663  that  his  book  had  reached  its  sixth  edition. 

It  was  re-echoed  through  England,  Germany,  France, 
and  America,  and,  if  possible,  yet  more  highly  developed. 
In  England  Theophilus  Gale  set  himself  to  prove  that  not 
only  all  the  languages,  but  all  the  learning  of  the  world,  had 
been  drawn  from  the  Hebrew  records. 

This  orthodox  doctrine  was  also  fully  vindicated  in  Hol- 
land. Six  years  before  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
Morinus,  Doctor  of  Theology,  Professor  of  Oriental  Lan- 
guages, and  pastor  at  Amsterdam,  published  his  great  work 
on  PrimcBval  Language.  Its  frontispiece  depicts  the  confu- 
sion of  tongues  at  Babel,  and,  as  a  pendant  to  this,  the  pen- 
tecostal  gift  of  tongues  to  the  apostles.     In  the  successive 


1 36  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY. 

chapters  of  the  first  book  he  proves  that  language  could  not 
have  come  into  existence  save  as  a  direct  gift  from  heaven  ; 
that  there  is  a  primitive  language,  the  mother  of  all  the  rest ; 
that  this  primitive  language  still  exists  in  its  pristine  purity  ; 
that  this  language  is  the  Hebrew.  The  second  book  is  de- 
voted to  proving  that  the  Hebrew  letters  were  divinely  re- 
ceived, have  been  preserved  intact,  and  are  the  source  of  all 
other  alphabets.  But  in  the  third  book  he  feels  obliged  to 
allow,  in  the  face  of  the  contrary  dogma  held,  as  he  says, 
by  "  not  a  few  most  eminent  men  piously  solicitous  for  the 
authority  of  the  sacred  text,"  that  the  Hebrew  punctuation 
was,  after  all,  not  of  Divine  inspiration,  but  a  late  invention 
of  the  rabbis. 

France,  also,  was  held  to  all  appearance  in  complete  sub- 
jection to  the  orthodox  idea  up  to  the  end  of  the  century. 
In  1697  appeared  at  Paris  perhaps  the  most  learned  of  all  the 
books  written  to  prove  Hebrew  the  original  tongue  and 
source  of  all  others.  The  Gallican  Church  was  then  at  the 
height  of  its  power.  Bossuet  as  bishop,  as  thinker,  and  as 
adviser  of  Louis  XIV,  had  crushed  all  opposition  to  ortho- 
doxy. The  Edict  of  Nantes  had  been  revoked,  and  the  Hu- 
guenots, so  far  as  they  could  escape,  were  scattered  through- 
out the  world,  destined  to  repay  France  with  interest  a  thou- 
sandfold during  the  next  two  centuries.  The  bones  of  the 
Jansenists  at  Port  Royal  were  dug  up  and  scattered.  Louis 
XIV  stood  guard  over  the  piety  of  his  people.  It  was  in 
the  midst  of  this  series  of  triumphs  that  Father  Louis  Tho- 
massin,  Priest  of  the  Oratory,  issued  his  Universal  Hebrew 
Glossary.  In  this,  to  use  his  own  language,  "the  divinity, 
antiquity,  and  perpetuity  of  the  Hebrew  tongue,  with  its 
letters,  accents,  and  other  characters,"  are  established  for- 
ever and  beyond  all  cavil,  by  proofs  drawn  from  all  peoples, 
kindreds,  and  nations  under  the  sun.  This  superb,  thousand- 
columned  folio  was  issued  from  the  royal  press,  and  is  one 
of  the  most  imposing  monuments  of  human  piety  and  folly — 
taking  rank  with  the  treatises  of  Fromundus  against  Galileo, 
of  Quaresmius  on  Lot's  Wife,  and  of  Gladstone  on  Genesis 
and  Geology. 

The  great  theologic-philologic  chorus  was  steadily  main- 
tained, and,  as   in   a   responsive    chant,  its   doctrines   were 


SACRED   THEORY   OF    LANGUAGE   IN    ITS   SECOND    FORM.   ^7 

echoed  from  land  to  land.  From  America  there  came  the 
earnest  words  of  John  Eliot,  praising  Hebrew  as  the  most 
fit  to  be  made  a  universal  language,  and  declaring  it  the 
tongue  "  which  it  pleased  our  Lord  Jesus  to  make  use  of 
when  he  spake  from  heaven  unto  Paul."  At  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century  came  from  England  a  strong  antiphonal 
answer  in  this  chorus  ;  Meric  Casaubon,  the  learned  Prebend- 
ary of  Canterbury,  thus  declared:  "One  language,  the  He- 
brew, I  hold  to  be  simply  and  absolutely  the  source  of  all." 
And,  to  swell  the  chorus,  there  came  into  it,  in  complete 
unison,  the  voice  of  Bentley — the  greatest  scholar  of  the  old 
sort  whom  England  has  ever  produced.  He  was,  indeed,  one 
of  the  most  learned  and  acute  critics  of  any  age ;  but  he  was 
also  Master  of  Trinity,  Archdeacon  of  Bristol,  held  two  liv- 
ings besides,  and  enjoyed  the  honour  of  refusing  the  bishopric 
of  Bristol,  as  not  rich  enough  to  tempt  him.  Noblesse  oblige : 
that  Bentley  should  hold  a  brief  for  the  theological  side  was 
inevitable,  and  we  need  not  be  surprised  when  we  hear  him 
declaring :  "  We  are  sure,  from  the  names  of  persons  and 
places  mentioned  in  Scripture  before  the  Deluge,  not  to  in- 
sist upon  other  arguments,  that  the  Hebrew  was  the  primi- 
tive language  of  mankind,  and  that  it  continued  pure  above 
three  thousand  years  until  the  captivity  in  Babylon."  The 
power  of  the  theologic  bias,  when  properly  stimulated  with 
ecclesiastical  preferment,  could  hardly  be  more  perfectly  ex- 
emplified than  in  such  a  captivity  of  such  a  man  as  Bentley. 
Yet  here  two  important  exceptions  should  be  noted.  In 
England,  Prideaux,  whose  biblical  studies  gave  him  much 
authority,  opposed  the  dominant  opinion ;  and  in  America, 
Cotton  Mather,  who  in  taking  his  Master's  degree  at  Har- 
vard had  supported  the  doctrine  that  the  Hebrew  vowel 
points  were  of  divine  origin,  bravely  recanted  and  declared 
for  the  better  view.* 


*  The  quotation  from  Guichard  is  from  L'  Harmonic  Etymologique  des  Langues, 
.  .  .  dans  la  quelle  par  plusieurs  Antiquites  et  Etymologies  de  t'oute  sorte,  je  de"- 
monstre  ividemment  que  toutes  les  langues  sont  descendues  de  V  Hibraique  ;  par  M. 
Estienne  Guichard,  Paris,  1631.  The  first  edition  appeared  in  1606.  For  Willett, 
see  his  Hexapla,  London,  1608,  pp.  125-128.  For  the  Address  of  L'Empereur,  see 
his  publication,  Leyden,  1627.  The  quotation  from  Lightfoot,  beginning  "  Other 
commendations,"  etc.,  is  taken  from  his  Erubhin,  or  Miscellanies,  edition  of  1629  ; 


1 38  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY. 

But  even  this  dissent  produced  little  immediate  effect,  and 
at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  this  sacred  doc- 
trine, based  upon  explicit  statements  of  Scripture,  seemed 
forever  settled.  As  we  have  seen,  strong  fortresses  had  been 
built  for  it  in  every  Christian  land  :  nothing  seemed  more 
unlikely  than  that  the  little  groups  of  scholars  scattered 
through  these  various  countries  could  ever  prevail  against 
them.  These  strongholds  were  built  so  firmly,  and  had  be- 
hind them  so  vast  an  army  of  religionists  of  every  creed,  that 
to  conquer  them  seemed  impossible.  And  yet  at  that  very 
moment  their  doom  was  decreed.  Within  a  few  years  from 
this  period  of  their  greatest  triumph,  the  garrisons  of  all 
these  sacred  fortresses  were  in  hopeless  confusion,  and  the 
armies  behind  them  in  full  retreat;  a  little  later,  all  the  im- 
portant orthodox  fortresses  and  forces  were  in  the  hands  of 
the  scientific  philologists. 

How  this  came  about  will  be  shown  in  the  third  part  of 
this  chapter. 

see  also  his  works,  vol.  iv,  pp.  46,  47,  London,  1822.  For  Bishop  Brian  Walton, 
see  the  Cambridge  edition  of  his  works,  1828,  Prolegomena,  §§  1  and  3.  As  to 
Walton's  giving  up  the  rabbinical  points,  he  mentions  in  one  of  the  latest  editions 
of  his  work  the  fact  that  Isaac  Casaubon,  Joseph  Scaliger,  Isaac  Vossius,  Grotius, 
Beza,  Luther,  Zwingli,  Brentz,  CEcolampadius,  Calvin,  and  even  some  of  the  popes, 
were  with  him  in  this.  For  Sennert,  see  his  Dissertatio  de  Ebraiea  S.  S.  Lingua 
Origine,  etc.,  Wittenberg,  1657;  also  his  Grammatica  Orientalis,  Wittenberg,  1666. 
For  Buxtorf,  see  the  preface  to  his  Thesaurus  Grammaticus  Lingua  Sancta  Hebraic?, 
sixth  edition,  1663.  For  Gale,  see  his  Court  of  the  Gentiles,  Oxford,  1672.  For 
Morinus,  see  his  Exercitationes  de  Lingua  Primava,  Utrecht,  1697.  For  Thomas- 
sin,  see  his  Glossariurn  Universale  Hebraicum,  Paris,  1697.  For  John  Eliot's  ut- 
terance, see  Mather's  Magnalia,  book  iii,  p.  184.  For  Meric  Casaubon,  see  his 
De  Lingua  Anglia  Vet.,  p.  160,  cited  by  Massey,  p.  16  of  Origin  and  Progress  of 
Letters.  For  Bentley,  see  his  works,  London,  1836,  vol.  ii,  p.  11,  and  citations  by 
Welsford,  Mithridates  Minor,  p.  2.  As  to  Bentley's  position  as  a  scholar,  see  the 
famous  estimate  in  Macaulay's  Essays.  For  a  short  but  very  interesting  account  of 
him,  see  Mark  Pattison's  article  in  vol.  iii  of  the  last  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia 
Btitannica.  The  position  of  Pattison  as  an  agnostic  dignitary  in  the  English 
Church  eminently  fitted  him  to  understand  Bentley's  career,  both  as  regards  the 
orthodox  and  the  scholastic  world.  For  perhaps  the  most  full  and  striking  account 
of  the  manner  in  which  Bentley  lorded  it  in  the  scholastic  world  of  his  time,  see 
Monk's  Life  of  Bentley,  vol.  ii,  chap,  xvii,  and  especially  his  contemptuous  reply  to 
the  judges,  as  given  in  vol.  ii,  pp.  211,  212.  For  Cotton  Mather,  see  his  biography 
by  Samuel  Mather,  Boston,  1729,  pp.  5,  6. 


BREAKING   DOWN   OF   THE   THEOLOGICAL   VIEW. 


III.    BREAKING   DOWN    OF   THE    THEOLOGICAL   VIEW. 


189 


We  have  now  seen  the  steps  by  which  the  sacred  theory 
of  human  language  had  been  developed:  how  it  had  been 
strengthened  in  every  land  until  it  seemed  to  bid  defiance 
forever  to  advancing  thought ;  how  it  rested  firmly  upon  the 
letter  of  Scripture,  upon  the  explicit  declarations  of  leading 
fathers  of  the  Church,  of  the  great  doctors  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  of  the  most  eminent  theological  scholars  down  to  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  was  guarded  by 
the  decrees  of  popes,  kings,  bishops,  Catholic  and  Protes- 
tant, and  the  whole  hierarchy  of  authorities  in  church  and 
state. 

And  yet,  as  we  now  look  back,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  even 
in  that  hour  of  its  triumph  it  was  doomed. 

The  reason  why  the  Church  has  so  fully  accepted  the 
conclusions  of  science  which  have  destroyed  the  sacred  the- 
ory is  instructive.  The  study  of  languages  has  been,  since 
the  Revival  of  Learning  and  the  Reformation,  a  favourite 
study  with  the  whole  Western  Church,  Catholic  and  Protes. 
tant.  The  importance  of  understanding  the  ancient  tongues 
in  which  our  sacred  books  are  preserved  first  stimulated  the 
study,  and  Church  missionary  efforts  have  contributed  nobly 
to  supply  the  material  for  extending  it,  and  for  the  applica- 
tion of  that  comparative  method  which,  in  philology  as  in 
other  sciences,  has  been  so  fruitful.  Hence  it  is  that  so 
many  leading  theologians  have  come  to  know  at  first  hand 
the  truths  given  by  this  science,  and  to  recognise  its  funda- 
mental principles.  What  the  conclusions  which  they,  as  well 
as  all  other  scholars  in  this  field,  have  been  absolutely  forced 
to  accept,  I  shall  now  endeavour  to  show. 

The  beginnings  of  a  scientific  theory  seemed  weak  indeed, 
but  they  were  none  the  less  effective.  As  far  back  as  166 J, 
Hottinger,  professor  at  Heidelberg,  came  into  the  chorus  of 
theologians  like  a  great  bell  in  a  chime  ;  but  like  a  bell  whose 
opening  tone  is  harmonious  and  whose  closing  tone  is  dis- 
cordant. For  while,  at  the  beginning,  Hottinger  cites  a  for- 
midable list  of  great  scholars  who  had  held  the  sacred  the- 
ory of  the  origin  of  language,  he  goes  on  to  note  a  closer 
resemblance   to   the    Hebrew   in   some    languages   than   in 


IQ0  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

others,  and  explains  this  by  declaring  that  the  confusion  of 
tongues  was  of  two  sorts,  total  and  partial :  the  Arabic  and 
Chaldaic  he  thinks  underwent  only  a  partial  confusion  ;  the 
Egyptian,  Persian,  and  all  the  European  languages  a  total 
one.  Here  comes  in  the  discord  ;  here  gently  sounds  forth 
from  the  great  chorus  a  new  note — that  idea  of  grouping 
and  classifying  languages  which  at  a  later  day  was  to  de- 
stroy utterly  the  whole  sacred  theory. 

But  the  great  chorus  resounded  on,  as  we  have  seen,  from 
shore  to  shore,  until  the  closing  years  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury ;  then  arose  men  who  silenced  it  forever.  The  first 
leader  who  threw  the  weight  of  his  knowledge,  thought,  and 
authority  against  it  was  Leibnitz.  He  declared,  "  There  is 
as  much  reason  for  supposing  Hebrew  to  have  been  the 
primitive  language  of  mankind  as  there  is  for  adopting  the 
view  of  Goropius,  who  published  a  work  at  Antwerp  in  1580 
to  prove  that  Dutch  was  the  language  spoken  in  paradise." 
In  a  letter  to  Tenzel,  Leibnitz  wrote,  "  To  call  Hebrew  the 
primitive  language  is  like  calling  the  branches  of  a  tree 
primitive  branches,  or  like  imagining  that  in  some  country 
hewn  trunks  could  grow  instead  of  trees."  He  also  asked, 
"  If  the  primeval  language  existed  even  up  to  the  time  of 
Moses,  whence  came  the  Egyptian  language?" 

But  the  efficiency  of  Leibnitz  did  not  end  with  mere  sug- 
gestions. He  applied  the  inductive  method  to  linguistic 
study,  made  great  efforts  to  have  vocabularies  collected  and 
grammars  drawn  up  wherever  missionaries  and  travellers 
came  in  contact  with  new  races,  and  thus  succeeded  in  giv- 
ing the  initial  impulse  to  at  least  three  notable  collections — 
that  of  Catharine  the  Great,  of  Russia ;  that  of  the  Spanish 
Jesuit,  Lorenzo  Hervas ;  and,  at  a  later  period,  the  MitJiri- 
dates  of  Adelung.  The  interest  of  the  Empress  Catharine  in 
her  collection  of  linguistic  materials  was  very  strong,  and 
her  influence  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  Washington,  to  please 
her,  requested  governors  and  generals  to  send  in  materials 
from  various  parts  of  the  United  States  and  the  Territories. 
The  work  of  Hervas  extended  over  the  period  from  1735  to 
1809:  a  missionary  in  America,  he  enlarged  his  catalogue  of 
languages  to  six  volumes,  which  were  published  in  Spanish 
in   1800,  and  contained  specimens  of  more  than  three  hun- 


BREAKING   DOWN   OF   THE   THEOLOGICAL   VIEW. 


I9I 


dred  languages,  with  the  grammars  of  more  than  forty.  It 
should  be  said  to  his  credit  that  Hervas  dared  point  out  with 
especial  care  the  limits  of  the  Semitic  family  of  languages, 
and  declared,  as  a  result  of  his  enormous  studies,  that  the 
various  languages  of  mankind  could  not  have  been  derived 
from  the  Hebrew. 

While  such  work  was  done  in  Catholic  Spain,  Protes- 
tant Germany  was  honoured  by  the  work  of  Adelung.  It 
contained  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  nearly  five  hundred  lan- 
guages and  dialects,  and  the  comparison  of  these,  early  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  helped  to  end  the  sway  of  theo- 
logical philology. 

But  the  period  which  intervened  between  Leibnitz  and 
this  modern  development  was  a  period  of  philological  chaos. 
It  began  mainly  with  the  doubts  which  Leibnitz  had  forced 
upon  Europe,  and  ended  only  with  the  beginning  of  the 
study  of  Sanskrit  in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  with  the  comparisons  made  by  means  of  the  collections 
of  Catharine,  Hervas,  and  Adelung  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth.  The  old  theory  that  Hebrew  was  the  original 
language  had  gone  to  pieces  ;  but  nothing  had  taken  its  place 
as  a  finality.  Great  authorities,  like  Buddeus,  were  still  cited 
in  behalf  of  the  narrower  belief ;  but  everywhere  researches, 
unorganized  though  they  were,  tended  to  destroy  it.  The 
story  of  Babel  continued  indeed  throughout  the  whole  eight- 
eenth century  to  hinder  or  warp  scientific  investigation,  and 
a  very  curious  illustration  of  this  fact  is  seen  in  the  book  of 
Lord  Nelme  on  The  Origin  and  Elements  of  Language.  He 
declares  that  connected  with  the  confusion  was  the  cleaving 
of  America  from  Europe,  and  he  regards  the  most  terrible 
chapters  in  the  book  of  Job  as  intended  for  a  description  of 
the  Flood,  which  in  all  probability  Job  had  from  Noah  him- 
self. Again,  Rowland  Jones  tried  to  prove  that  Celtic  was 
the  primitive  tongue,  and  that  it  passed  through  Babel  un- 
harmed. Still  another  effect  was  made  by  a  Breton  to  prove 
that  all  languages  took  their  rise  in  the  language  of  Brittany. 
All  was  chaos.  There  was  much  wrangling,  but  little  ear- 
nest controversy.  Here  and  there  theologians  were  calling 
out  frantically,  beseeching  the  Church  to  save  the  old  doc- 
trine as  "  essential  to  the  truth  of  Scripture  "  ;  here  and  there 


192 


FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 


other  divines  began  to  foreshadow  the  inevitable  compro- 
mise which  has  always  been  thus  vainly  attempted  in  the 
history  of  every  science.  But  it  was  soon  seen  by  thinking 
men  that  no  concessions  as  yet  spoken  of  by  theologians 
were  sufficient.  In  the  latter  half  of  the  century  came  the 
bloom  period  of  the  French  philosophers  and  encyclopedists, 
of  the  English  deists,  of  such  German  thinkers  as  Herder, 
Kant,  and  Lessing  ;  and  while  here  and  there  some  writer  on 
the  theological  side,  like  Perrin,  amused  thinking  men  by 
his  flounderings  in  this  great  chaos,  all  remained  without 
form  and  void.* 

Nothing  better  reveals  to  us  the  darkness  and  duration 
of  this  chaos  in  England  than  a  comparison  of  the  articles  on 
Philology  given  in  the  successive  editions  of  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica.  The  first  edition  of  that  great  mirror  of  British 
thought  was  printed  in  1771  :  chaos  reigns  through  the  whole 
of  its  article  on  this  subject.  The  writer  divides  languages 
into  two  classes,  seems  to  indicate  a  mixture  of  divine  inspira- 
tion with  human  invention,  and  finally  escapes  under  a  cloud. 
In  the  second  edition,  published  in  1780,  some  progress  has 
been  made.  The  author  states  the  sacred  theory,  and  de- 
clares:  "There  are  some  divines  who  pretend  that  Hebrew 
was  the  language  in  which  God  talked  with  Adam  in  para- 
dise, and  that  the  saints  will  make  use  of  it  in  heaven  in 
those  praises  which  they  will  eternally  offer  to  the  Almighty. 
These  doctors  seem  to  be  as  certain  in  regard  to  what  is  past 
as  to  what  is  to  come." 

This  was  evidently  considered  dangerous.     It  clearly  out- 


*  For  Hottinger,  see  the  preface  to  his  Etymologicum  Orientate,  Frankfort,  1661. 
For  Leibnitz,  Catharine  the  Great,  Hervas,  and  Adelung,  see  Max  Miiller,  as  above, 
from  whom  I  have  quoted  very  fully  ;  see  also  Benfey,  Geschichte  cier  Sprachivis- 
senschaft,  etc.,  p.  269.  Benfey  declares  that  the  Catalogue  of  Hervas  is  even  now 
a  mine  for  the  philologist.  For  the  first  two  citations  from  Leibnitz,  as  well  as  for 
a  statement  of  his  importance  in  the  history  of  languages,  see  Max  Miiller  as  above, 
pp.  135,  136.  For  the  third  quotation,  Leibnitz,  Opera,  Geneva,  1768,  vi,  part  ii, 
p.  232.  For  Nelme,  see  his  Origin  and  Elements  of  Language,  London,  1772,  pp. 
85-100.  For  Rowland  Jones,  see  The  Origin  of  Language  and  Nations,  London, 
1764,  and  preface.  For  the  origin  of  languages  in  Brittany,  see  Le  Brigant,  Paris, 
1787.  For  Herder  and  Lessing,  see  Canon  Farrar's  treatise;  on  Lessing,  see 
Sayce,  as  above.  As  to  Perrin,  see  his  essay  Sur  VOrigine  et  V Antiquite"  des 
Langues,  London,  1767. 


TRIUMPH   OF    THE    NEW   SCIENCE.  ^ 

ran  the  belief  of  the  average  British  Philistine ;  and  accord- 
ingly we  find  in  the  third  edition,  published  seventeen  years 
later,  a  new  article,  in  which,  while  the  author  gives,  as  he 
says,  "  the  best  arguments  on  both  sides,"  he  takes  pains  to 
adhere  to  a  fairly  orthodox  theory. 

This  soothing  dose  was  repeated  in  the  fourth  and  fifth 
editions.  In  1824  appeared  a  supplement  to  the  fourth,  fifth, 
and  sixth  editions,  which  dealt  with  the  facts  so  far  as  they 
were  known ;  but  there  was  scarcely  a  reference  to  the  bib- 
lical theory  throughout  the  article.  Three  years  later  came 
another  supplement.  While  this  chaos  was  fast  becoming 
cosmos  in  Germany,  such  a  change  had  evidently  not  gone 
far  in  England,  for  from  this  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  the 
subject  of  philology  was  omitted.  In  fact,  Babel  and  Phi- 
lology made  nearly  as  much  trouble  to  encyclopedists  as 
Noah's  Deluge  and  Geology.  Just  as  in  the  latter  case  they 
had  been  obliged  to  stave  off  a  presentation  of  scientific  truth, 
by  the  words  "  For  Deluge,  see  Flood  "  and  "  For  Flood,  see 
Noah,"  so  in  the  former  they  were  obliged  to  take  various 
provisional  measures,  some  of  them  comical.  In  1842  came 
the  seventh  edition.  In  this  the  first  part  of  the  old  article 
on  Philology  which  had  appeared  in  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth 
editions  was  printed,  but  the  supernatural  part  was  mainly 
cut  out.  Yet  we  find  a  curious  evidence  of  the  continued 
reign  of  chaos  in  a  foot-note  inserted  by  the  publishers,  dis- 
avowing any  departure  from  orthodox  views.  In  1859  aP- 
peared  the  eighth  edition.  This  abandoned  the  old  article 
completely,  and  in  its  place  gave  a  history  of  philologv  free 
from  admixture  of  scriptural  doctrines.  Finally,  in  the  year 
1885,  appeared  the  ninth  edition,  in  which  Professors  Whit- 
ney of  Yale  and  Sievers  of  Tubingen  give  admirably  and  in 
fair  compass  what  is  known  of  philology,  making  short 
work  of  the  sacred  theory — in  fact,  throwing  it  overboard 
entirely. 

IV.    TRIUMPH    OF   THE   NEW   SCIENCE. 

Such  was  that  chaos  of  thought  into  which  the  discovery 
of  Sanskrit  suddenly  threw  its  great  light.     Well  does  one 
of  the  foremost  modern  philologists  say  that  this  "  was  the 
41 


194 


FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY. 


electric  spark  which  caused  the  floating  elements  to  crystal- 
lize into  regular  forms."  Among  the  first  to  bring  the  knowl- 
edge of  Sanskrit  to  Europe  were  the  Jesuit  missionaries, 
whose  services  to  the  material  basis  of  the  science  of  com- 
parative philology  had  already  been  so  great ;  and  the  im- 
portance of  the  new  discovery  was  soon  seen  among  all 
scholars,  whether  orthodox  or  scientific.  In  1784  the  Asiatic 
Society  at  Calcutta  was  founded,  and  with  it  began  Sanskrit 
philology.  Scholars  like  Sir  William  Jones,  Carey,  Wilkins, 
Foster,  Colebrooke,  did  noble  work  in  the  new  field.  A  new 
spirit  brooded  over  that  chaos,  and  a  great  new  orb  of  sci- 
ence was  evolved. 

The  little  group  of  scholars  who  gave  themselves  up  to 
these  researches,  though  almost  without  exception  reverent 
Christians,  were  recognised  at  once  by  theologians  as  mortal 
foes  of  the  whole  sacred  theory  of  language.  Not  only  was 
the  dogma  of  the  multiplication  of  languages  at  the  Tower 
of  Babel  swept  out  of  sight  by  the  new  discovery,  but  the 
still  more  vital  dogma  of  the  divine  origin  of  language,  never 
before  endangered,  was  felt  to  be  in  peril,  since  the  evidence 
became  overwhelming  that  so  many  varieties  had  been  pro- 
duced by  a  process  of  natural  growth. 

Heroic  efforts  were  therefore  made,  in  the  supposed  in- 
terest of  Scripture,  to  discredit  the  new  learning.  Even 
such  a  man  as  Dugald  Stewart  declared  that  the  discovery 
of  Sanskrit  was  altogether  fraudulent,  and  endeavoured  to 
prove  that  the  Brahmans  had  made  it  up  from  the  vocabulary 
and  grammar  of  Greek  and  Latin.  Others  exercised  their 
ingenuity  in  picking  the  new  discovery  to  pieces,  and  still 
others  attributed  it  all  to  the  machinations  of  Satan. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  more  thoughtful  men  in  the 
Church  endeavoured  to  save  something  from  the  wreck  of 
the  old  system  by  a  compromise.  They  attempted  to  prove 
that  Hebrew  is  at  least  a  cognate  tongue  with  the  original 
speech  of  mankind,  if  not  the  original  speech  itself;  but 
here  they  were  confronted  by  the  authority  they  dreaded 
most— the  great  Christian  scholar,  Sir  William  Jones  himself- 
His  words  were :  "  I  can  only  declare  my  belief  that  the  lan- 
guage of  Noah  is  irretrievably  lost.  After  diligent  search  I 
can  not  find  a  single  word  used  in  common  by  the  Arabian, 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE    NEW   SCIENCE.  I95 

Indian,  and  Tartar  families,  before  the  intermixture  of  dia- 
lects occasioned  by  the  Mohammedan  conquests." 

So,  too,  in  Germany  came  full  acknowledgment  of  the 
new  truth,  and  from  a  Roman  Catholic,  Frederick  Schlegel. 
He  accepted  the  discoveries  in  the  old  language  and  litera- 
ture of  India  as  final:  he  saw  the  significance  of  these  dis- 
coveries as  regards  philology,  and  grouped  the  languages  of 
India,  Persia,  Greece,  Italy,  and  Germany  under  the  name 
afterward  so  universally  accepted— Indo-Germanic. 

It  now  began  to  be  felt  more  and  more,  even  among  the 
most  devoted  churchmen,  that  the  old  theological  dogmas 
regarding  the  origin  of  language,  as  held  "always,  every- 
where, and  by  all,"  were  wrong,  and  that  Lucretius  and 
sturdy  old  Gregory  of  Nyssa  might  be  right. 

But  this  was  not  the  only  wreck.  During  ages  the  great 
men  in  the  Church  had  been  calling  upon  the  world  to  ad- 
mire the  amazing  exploit  of  Adam  in  naming  the  animals 
which  Jehovah  had  brought  before  him,  and  to  accept  the 
history  of  language  in  the  light  of  this  exploit.  The  early 
fathers,  the  mediaeval  doctors,  the  great  divines  of  the  Ref- 
ormation period,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  had  united  in  this 
universal  chorus.  Clement  of  Alexandria  declared  Adam's 
naming  of  the  animals  proof  of  a  prophetic  gift.  St.  John 
Chrysostom  insisted  that  it  was  an  evidence  of  consummate 
intelligence.  Eusebius  held  that  the  phrase  "  That  was  the 
name  thereof "  implied  that  each  name  embodied  the  real 
character  and  description  of  the  animal  concerned. 

This  view  was  echoed  by  a  multitude  of  divines  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  Typical  among  these 
was  the  great  Dr.  South,  who,  in  his  sermon  on  The  State  of 
Man  before  the  Fall,  declared  that  "Adam  came  into  the 
world  a  philosopher,  which  sufficiently  appears  by  his  writ- 
ing the  nature  of  things  upon  their  names." 

In  the  chorus  of  modern  English  divines  there  appeared 
one  of  eminence  who  declared  against  this  theory :  Dr. 
Shuckford,  chaplain  in  ordinary  to  his  Majesty  George  II, 
in  the  preface  to  his  work  on  The  Creation  and  Fall  of  Man, 
pronounced  the  whole  theory  "  romantic  and  irrational."  He 
goes  on  to  say :  "  The  original  of  our  speaking  was  from 
God  ;  not  that  God  put  into  Adam's  mouth  the  very  sounds 


!g(5  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

which  he  designed  he  should  use  as  the  names  of  things ;  but 
God  made  Adam  with  the  powers  of  a  man ;  he  had  the  use 
of  an  understanding  to  form  notions  in  his  mind  of  the  things 
about  him,  and  he  had  the  power  to  utter  sounds  which  should 
be  to  himself  the  names  of  things  according  as  he  might  think 
fit  to  call  them." 

This  echo  of  Gregory  of  Nyssa  was  for  many  years  of 
little  avail.  Historians  of  philosophy  still  began  with  Adam, 
because  only  a  philosopher  could  have  named  all  created 
things.  There  was,  indeed,  one  difficulty  which  had  much 
troubled  some  theologians :  this  was,  that  fishes  were  not 
specially  mentioned  among  the  animals  brought  by  Jehovah 
before  Adam  for  naming.  To  meet  this  difficulty  there  was 
much  argument,  and  some  theologians  laid  stress  on  the  dif- 
ficulty of  bringing  fishes  from  the  sea  to  the  Garden  of  Eden 
to  receive  their  names ;  but  naturally  other  theologians  re- 
plied that  the  almighty  power  which  created  the  fishes 
could  have  easily  brought  them  into  the  garden,  one  by  one, 
even  from  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea.  This  point,  there- 
fore, seems  to  have  been  left  in  abeyance.* 

It  had  continued,  then,  the  universal  belief  in  the  Church 
that  the  names  of  all  created  things,  except  possibly  fishes, 
were  o-iven  by  Adam  and  in  Hebrew ;  but  all  this  theory 
was  whelmed  in  ruin  when  it  was  found  that  there  were 
other  and  indeed  earlier  names  for  the  same  animals  than 
those  in  the  Hebrew  language  ;  and  especially  was  this  en- 
forced on  thinking  men  when  the  Egyptian  discoveries  be- 
gan to  reveal  the  pictures  of  animals  with  their  names  in 


*  For  UV  danger  of  "  the  little  system  of  the  history  of  the  world,"  see  Sayce, 
as  above.  On  Dugald  Stewart's  contention,  see  Max  Miiller,  Lectures  on  Language, 
Pp  167  168.  For  Sir  William  Jones,  see  his  Works,  London,  1807,  vol.  1,  p.  199. 
For  Schlegel,  see  Max  Miiller,  as  above.  For  an  enormous  list  of  great  theo- 
logians, from  the  fathers  down,  who  dwelt  on  the  divine  inspiration  and  wonderful 
gifts  of  Adam  on  this  subject,  see  Canon  Farrar,  Language  and  Languages.  The 
citation  from  Clement  of  Alexandria  is  Strom.,  i,  p.  335-  See  also  Chrysostom, 
Horn.  XIV  in  Genesin  ;  also  Eusebius,  Prop.  Evang.  XL,  p.  6.  For  the  two 
quotations  above  given  from  Shuckford,  see  The  Creation  and  Fall  of  Man,  Lon- 
don, 1763,  preface,  p.  lxxxiii  ;  also  his  Sacred  and  Profane  History  of  the  World, 
1753;  revised  edition  by  Wheeler,  London,  185S.  For  the  argument  regarding 
the  difficulty  of  bringing  the  fishes  to  be  named  into  the  Garden  of  Eden,  see 
Massey,  Origin  and  Progress  of  Letters,  London,  1763,  pp.  14-19- 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   NEW   SCIENCE. 


I97 


hieroglyphics  at  a  period  earlier  than  that  agreed  on  by  all 
the  sacred  chronologists  as  the  date  of  the  Creation. 

Still  another  part  of  the  sacred  theory  now  received  its 
death-blow.  Closely  allied  with  the  question  of  the  origin 
of  language  was  that  of  the  origin  of  letters.  The  earlier 
writers  had  held  that  letters  were  also  a  divine  gift  to 
Adam  ;  but  as  we  go  on  in  the  eighteenth  century  we  find 
theological  opinion  inclining  to  the  belief  that  this  gift  was 
reserved  for  Moses.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  view  of 
St.  John  Chrysostom  ;  and  an  eminent  English  divine  early 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  John  Johnson,  Vicar  of  Kent, 
echoed  it  in  the  declaration  concerning  the  alphabet,  that 
"  Moses  first  learned  it  from  God  by  means  of  the  lettering 
on  the  tables  of  the  law."  But  here  a  difficulty  arose — the 
biblical  statement  that  God  commanded  Moses  to  "  write  in 
a  book  "  his  decree  concerning  Amalek  before  he  went  up 
into  Sinai.  With  this  the  good  vicar  grapples  manfully. 
He  supposes  that  God  had  previously  concealed  the  tables 
of  stone  in  Mount  Horeb,  and  that  Moses,  "  when  he  kept 
Jethro's  sheep  thereabout,  had  free  access  to  these  tables, 
and  perused  them  at  discretion,  though  he  was  not  per- 
mitted to  carry  them  down  with  him."  Our  reconciler  then 
asks  for  what  other  reason  could  God  have  kept  Moses  up 
in  the  mountain  forty  days  at  a  time,  except  to  teach  him  to 
write  ;  and  says,  "  It  seems  highly  probable  that  the  angel 
gave  him  the  alphabet  of  the  Hebrew,  or  in  some  other  way 
unknown  to  us  became  his  guide." 

But  this  theory  of  letters  was  soon  to  be  doomed  like  the 
other  parts  of  the  sacred  theory.  Studies  in  Comparative 
Philology,  based  upon  researches  in  India,  began  to  be  re- 
enforced  by  facts  regarding  the  inscriptions  in  Egypt,  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Assyria,  the  legends  of  Chaldea, 
and  the  folklore  of  China — where  it  was  found  in  the  sacred 
books  that  the  animals  were  named  by  Fohi,  and  with  such 
wisdom  and  insight  that  every  name  disclosed  the  nature  of 
the  corresponding  animal. 

But,  although  the  old  theory  was  doomed,  heroic  efforts 
were  still  made  to  support  it.  In  1788  James  Beattie,  in  all 
the  glory  of  his  Oxford  doctorate  and  royal  pension,  made  a 
vigorous  onslaught,  declaring  the  new  system  of  philology 


198 


FROM   BABEL    TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 


to  be  "  degrading  to  our  nature,"  and  that  the  theory  of  the 
natural  development  of  language  is  simply  due  to  the  beauty 
of  Lucretius'  poetry.  But  his  main  weapon  was  ridicule,  and 
in  this  he  showed  himself  a  master.  He  tells  the  world,  "  The 
following  paraphrase  has  nothing  of  the  elegance  of  Horace 
or  Lucretius,  but  seems  to  have  all  the  elegance  that  so 
ridiculous  a  doctrine  deserves  "  : 

"  When  men  out  of  the  earth  of  old 
A  dumb  and  beastly  vermin  crawled ; 
For  acorns,  first,  and  holes  of  shelter, 
They  tooth  and  nail,  and  helter  skelter, 
Fought  fist  to  fist  ;  then  with  a  club 
Each  learned  his  brother  brute  to  drub  ; 
Till,  more  experienced  grown,  these  cattle 
Forged  fit  accoutrements  for  battle. 
At  last  (Lucretius  says  and  Creech) 
They  set  their  wits  to  work  on  speech  : 
And  that  their  thoughts  might  all  have  marks 
To  make  them  known,  these  learned  clerks 
Left  off  the  trade  of  cracking  crowns, 
And  manufactured  verbs  and  nouns." 

But  a  far  more  powerful  theologian  entered  the  field  in 
England  to  save  the  sacred  theory  of  language — Dr.  Adam 
Clarke.  He  was  no  less  severe  against  Philology  than  against 
Geology.  In  1804,  as  President  of  the  Manchester  Philo- 
logical Society,  he  delivered  an  address  in  which  he  declared 
that,  while  men  of  all  sects  were  eligible  to  membership,  "  he 
who  rejects  the  establishment  of  what  we  believe  to  be  a 
divine  revelation,  he  who  would  disturb  the  peace  of  the  quiet, 
and  by  doubtful  disputations  unhinge  the  minds  of  the  simple 
and  unreflecting,  and  endeavour  to  turn  the  unwary  out  of 
the  way  of  peace  and  rational  subordination,  can  have  no 
seat  among  the  members  of  this  institution."  The  first  sen- 
tence in  this  declaration  gives  food  for  reflection,  for  it  is  the 
same  confusion  of  two  ideas  which  has  been  at  the  root  of  so 
much  interference  of  theology  with  science  for  the  last  two 
thousand  years.  Adam  Clarke  speaks  of  those  "  who  reject 
the  establishment  of  what  '  we  believe '  to  be  a  divine  revela- 
tion." Thus  comes  in  that  customary  begging  of  the  ques- 
tion— the  substitution,  as  the  real  significance  of  Scripture, 
of  "  what  we  believe  "  for  what  is. 


TRIUMPH    OF    THE    NEW    SCIENCE.  !qq 

The  intended  result,  too,  of  this  ecclesiastical  sentence 
was  simple  enough.  It  was,  that  great  men  like  Sir  William 
Jones,  Colebrooke,  and  their  compeers,  must  not  be  heard  in 
the  Manchester  Philological  Society  in  discussion  with  Dr. 
Adam  Clarke  on  questions  regarding  Sanskrit  and  other 
matters  regarding  which  they  knew  all  that  was  then  known, 
and  Dr.  Clarke  knew  nothing. 

But  even  Clarke  was  forced  to  yield  to  the  scientific  cur- 
rent. Thirty  years  later,  in  his  Commentary  on  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, he  pitched  the  claims  of  the  sacred  theory  on  a  much 
lower  key.  He  says  :  "  Mankind  was  of  one  language,  in  all 
likelihood  the  Hebrew.  .  .  .  The  proper  names  and  other 
significations  given  in  the  Scripture  seem  incontestable  evi- 
dence that  the  Hebrew  language  was  the  original  language 
of  the  earth, — the  language  in  which  God  spoke  to  man,  and 
in  which  he  gave  the  revelation  of  his  will  to  Moses  and  the 
prophets."  Here  are  signs  that  this  great  champion  is  grow- 
ing weaker  in  the  faith  :  in  the  citations  made  it  will  be  ob- 
served he  no  longer  says  "  is"  but  "seems"  ;  and  finally  we 
have  him  saying,  "  What  the  first  language  was  is  almost 
useless  to  inquire,  as  it  is  impossible  to  arrive  at  any  satis- 
factory information  on  this  point." 

In  France,  during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
yet  more  heavy  artillery  was  wheeled  into  place,  in  order  to 
make  a  last  desperate  defence  of  the  sacred  theory.  The 
leaders  in  this  effort  were  the  three  great  Ultramontanes, 
De  Maistre,  De  Bonald,  and  Lamennais.  Condillac's  con- 
tention that  "  languages  were  gradually  and  insensibly  ac- 
quired, and  that  every  man  had  his  share  of  the  general 
result,"  they  attacked  with  reasoning  based  upon  premises 
drawn  from  the  book  of  Genesis.  De  Maistre  especially  ex- 
celled in  ridiculing  the  philosophic  or  scientific  theory.  La- 
mennais, who  afterward  became  so  vexatious  a  thorn  in  the 
side  of  the  Church,  insisted,  at  this  earlier  period,  that  "  man 
can  no  more  think  without  words  than  see  without  light." 
And  then,  by  that  sort  of  mystical  play  upon  words  so  well 
known  in  the  higher  ranges  of  theologic  reasoning,  he 
clinches  his  argument  by  saying,  "  The  Word  is  truly  and  in 
every  sense  '  the  light  which  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh 
into  the  world.'  " 


200  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY. 

But  even  such  champions  as  these  could  not  stay  the  prog- 
ress of  thought.  While  they  seemed  to  be  carrying  every- 
thing before  them  in  France,  researches  in  philology  made  at 
such  centres  of  thought  as  the  Sorbonne  and  the  College  of 
France  were  undermining  their  last  great  fortress.  Curious 
indeed  is  it  to  find  that  the  Sorbonne,  the  stronghold  of  the- 
ology through  so  many  centuries,  was  now  made  in  the 
nineteenth  century  the  arsenal  and  stronghold  of  the  new 
ideas.  But  the  most  striking  result  of  the  new  tendency  in 
France  was  seen  when  the  greatest  of  the  three  champions, 
Lamennais  himself,  though  offered  the  highest  Church  pre- 
ferment, and  even  a  cardinal's  hat,  braved  the  papal  anathema, 
and  went  over  to  the  scientific  side.* 

In  Germany  philological  science  took  so  strong  a  hold 
that  its  positions  were  soon  recognised  as  impregnable. 
Leaders  like  the  Schlegels,  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  and 
above  all  Franz  Bopp  and  Jacob  Grimm,  gave  such  addi- 
tional force  to  scientific  truth  that  it  could  no  longer  be 
withstood.  To  say  nothing  of  other  conquests,  the  demon- 
stration of  that  great  law  in  philology  which  bears  Grimm's 
name  brought  home  to  all  thinking  men  the  evidence  that 
the  evolution  of  language  had  not  been  determined  by  the 
philosophic  utterances  of  Adam  in  naming  the  animals 
which  Jehovah  brought  before  him,  but  in  obedience  to 
natural  law. 

True,  a  few  devoted  theologians  showed  themselves  will- 
ing to  lead  a  forlorn  hope ;  and  perhaps  the  most  forlorn  of 
all  was  that  of  1840,  led  by  Dr.  Gottlieb  Christian  Kayser, 


*  For  Johnson's  work,  showing  how  Moses  learned  the  alphabet,  see  the  Collec- 
tion of  Discourses  by  Rev.  John  Johnson,  A.M.,  Vicar  of  Kent,  London,  1728,  p. 
42,  and  the  preface.  For  Beattie,  see  his  Theory  of  Language,  London,  1788,  p. 
qS  ;  also  pp.  100,  101.  For  Adam  Clarke,  see,  for  the  speech  cited,  his  Miscellaneous 
Works,  London,  1837  ;  for  the  passage  from  his  Commentary,  see  the  London  edition 
of  1836,  vol.  i,  p.  93  ;  for  the  other  passage,  see  Introduction  to  Bibliographical 
Miscellany,  quoted  in  article,  Origin  of  Language  and  Alphabetical  Characters,  in 
Methodist  Magazine,  vol.  xv,  p.  214.  For  De  Bonald,  see  his  Recherchcs  Philo- 
sophiques,  part  iii,  chap,  ii,  De  I'Origine  du  Langage,  in  his  CEuvres  Completes, 
Paris,  1859,  pp.  64-78,  passim.  For  Joseph  de  Maistre,  see  his  CEuvres,  Bruxelles, 
1852,  vol.  i,  Les  Soir/es  de  Saint  Petersbourg,  deuxieme  entretien, passim.  For  La- 
mennais, see  his  CEuvres  Completes,  Paris,  1836-37,  tome  ii,  pp.  78-81,  chap,  xv  of 
Essai  sur  V Indifference  en  Matihre  de  Religion. 


TRIUMPH   OF   THE   NEW   SCIENCE.  2OI 

Professor  of  Theology  at  the  Protestant  University  of  Erlan- 
gen.  He  does  not,  indeed,  dare  put  in  the  old  claim  that 
Hebrew  is  identical  with  the  primitive  tongue,  but  he  insists 
that  it  is  nearer  it  than  any  other.  He  relinquishes  the  two 
former  theological  strongholds — first,  the  idea  that  language 
was  taught  by  the  Almighty  to  Adam,  and,  next,  that  the 
alphabet  was  thus  taught  to  Moses — and  falls  back  on  the 
position  that  all  tongues  are  thus  derived  from  Noah,  giving 
as  an  example  the  language  of  the  Caribbees,  and  insisting 
that  it  was  evidently  so  derived.  What  chance  similarity 
in  words  between  Hebrew  and  the  Caribbee  tongue  he 
had  in  mind  is  past  finding  out.  He  comes  out  strongly 
in  defence  of  the  biblical  account  of  the  Tower  of  Babel, 
and  insists  that  "  by  the  symbolical  expression  '  God  said, 
Let  us  go  down,'  a  further  natural  phenomenon  is  inti- 
mated, to  wit,  the  cleaving  of  the  earth,  whereby  the  re- 
turn of  the  dispersed  became  impossible — that  is  to  sav, 
through  a  new  or  not  universal  flood,  a  partial  inundation 
and  temporary  violent  separation  of  great  continents  until 
the  time  of  the  rediscovery."  By  these  words  the  learned 
doctor  means  nothing  less  than  the  separation  of  Europe 
from  America. 

While  at  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  theory 
of  the  origin  and  development  of  language  was  upon  the 
continent  considered  as  settled,  and  a  well-ordered  science 
had  there  emerged  from  the  old  chaos,  Great  Britain  still 
held  back,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  most  important  con- 
tributors to  the  science  were  of  British  origin.  Leaders  in 
every  English  church  and  sect  vied  with  each  other,  either 
in  denouncing  the  encroachments  of  the  science  of  language 
or  in  explaining  them  away. 

But  a  new  epoch  had  come,  and  in  a  way  least  expected. 
Perhaps  the  most  notable  effort  in  bringing  it  in  was  made 
by  Dr.  Wiseman,  afterward  Cardinal  Archbishop  of  West- 
minster. His  is  one  of  the  best  examples  of  a  method  which 
has  been  used  with  considerable  effect  during  the  latest 
stages  of  nearly  all  the  controversies  between  theology 
and  science.  It  consists  in  stating,  with  much  fairness,  the 
conclusions  of  the  scientific  authorities,  and  then  in  per- 
suading one's  self  and  trying  to  persuade  others  that   the 


202  FROM   BABEL   TO    COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

Church  has  always  accepted  them  and  accepts  them  now  as 
"  additional  proofs  of  the  truth  of  Scripture."  A  little  jug- 
gling with  words,  a  little  amalgamation  of  texts,  a  little  judi- 
cious suppression,  a  little  imaginative  deduction,  a  little 
unctuous  phrasing,  and  the  thing  is  done.  One  great  service 
this  eminent  and  kindly  Catholic  champion  undoubtedly- 
rendered  :  by  this  acknowledgment,  so  widely  spread  in  his 
published  lectures,  he  made  it  impossible  for  Catholics  or 
Protestants  longer  to  resist  the  main  conclusions  of  science. 
Henceforward  we  only  have  efforts  to  save  theological  ap- 
pearances, and  these  only  by  men  whose  zeal  outran  their 
discretion. 

On  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  down  to  a  recent  period, 
we  see  these  efforts,  but  we  see  no  less  clearly  that  they  are 
mutually  destructive.  Yet  out  of  this  chaos  among  English- 
speaking  peoples  the  new  science  began  to  develop  steadily 
and  rapidly.  Attempts  did  indeed  continue  here  and  there 
to  save  the  old  theory.  Even  as  late  as  1859  we  hear  the 
eminent  Presbyterian  divine,  Dr.  John  Cumming,  from  his 
pulpit  in  London,  speaking  of  Hebrew  as  "  that  magnificent 
tongue — that  mother-tongue,  from  which  all  others  are  but 
distant  and  debilitated  progenies." 

But  the  honour  of  producing  in  the  nineteenth  century 
the  most  absurd  known  attempt  to  prove  Hebrew  the  primi- 
tive tongue  belongs  to  the  youngest  of  the  continents,  Aus- 
tralia. In  the  year  1857  was  printed  at  Melbourne  The  Tri- 
umph of  Truth,  or  a  Popular  Lecture  on  the  Origin  of  Languages, 
by  B.  Atkinson,  M.  R.  C.  P.  L. — whatever  that  may  mean. 
In  this  work,  starting  with  the  assertion  that  "the  Hebrew 
was  the  primary  stock  whence  all  languages  were  derived," 
the  author  states  that  Sanskrit  is  "  a  dialect  of  the  Hebrew," 
and  declares  that  "  the  manuscripts  found  with  mummies 
agree  precisely  with  the  Chinese  version  of  the  Psalms  of 
David."  It  all  sounds  like  Alice  in  Wonderland.  Curiously 
enough,  in  the  latter  part  of  his  book,  evidently  thinking 
that  his  views  would  not  give  him  authority  among  fastid- 
ious philologists,  he  says,  "  A  great  deal  of  our  consent  to 
the  foregoing  statements  arises  in  our  belief  in  the  Divine 
inspiration  of  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation  of  the 
world  and  of  our  first  parents  in  the  Garden  of  Eden."     A 


TRIUMPH   OF    THE   NEW   SCIENCE.  203 

yet  more  interesting-  light  is  thrown  upon  the  author's  view 
of  truth,  and  of  its  promulgation,  by  his  dedication  :  he  says 
that,  "  being  persuaded  that  literary  men  ought  to  be  fosten  <  1 
by  the  hand  of  power,"  he  dedicates  his  treatise  "  to  his  Ex- 
cellency Sir  H.  Barkly,"  who  was  at  the  time  Governor  of 
Victoria. 

Still  another  curious  survival  is  seen  in  a  work  which  ap- 
peared as  late  as  18S5,  at  Edinburgh,  by  William  Galloway, 
M.  A.,  Ph.  D.,  M.  D.  The  author  thinks  that  he  has  pro- 
duced abundant  evidence  to  prove  that  "Jehovah,  the  Sec- 
ond Person  of  the  Godhead,  wrote  the  first  chapter  of  Gene- 
sis on  a  stone  pillar,  and  that  this  is  the  manner  by  which 
he  first  revealed  it  to  Adam  ;  and  thus  Adam  was  taught 
not  only  to  speak  but  to  read  and  write  by  Jehovah,  the 
Divine  Son ;  and  that  the  first  lesson  he  got  was  from  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis."  He  goes  on  to  say:  "Jehovah 
wrote  these  first  two  documents ;  the  first  containing  the 
history  of  the  Creation,  and  the  second  the  revelation  of 
man's  redemption,  .  .  .  for  Adam's  and  Eve's  instruction  ; 
it  is  evident  that  he  wrote  them  in  the  Hebrew  tongue,  be- 
cause that  was  the  language  of  Adam  and  Eve."  But  this 
was  only  a  flower  out  of  season. 

And,  finally,  in  these  latter  days  Mr.  Gladstone  has  touched 
the  subject.  With  that  well-known  facility  in  believing  any- 
thing he  wishes  to  believe,  which  he  once  showed  in  con- 
necting Neptune's  trident  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
he  floats  airily  over  all  the  impossibilities  of  the  original 
Babel  legend  and  all  the  conquests  of  science,  makes  an  as- 
sertion regarding  the  results  of  philology  which  no  philolo- 
gist of  any  standing  would  admit,  and  then  escapes  in  a 
cloud  of  rhetoric  after  his  well-known  fashion.  This,  too, 
must  be  set  down  simply  as  a  survival,  for  in  the  British 
Isles  as  elsewhere  the  truth  has  been  established.  Such  men 
as  Max  Miillerand  Sayce  in  England, — Steinthal,  Schleicher, 
Weber,  Karl  Abel,  and  a  host  of  others  in  Germany, — Ascoli 
and  De  Gubernatis  in  Italy, — and  Whitney,  with  the  schol- 
ars inspired  by  him,  in  America,  have  carried  the  new 
science  to  a  complete  triumph.  The  sons  of  Yale  Univer- 
sity may  well  be  proud  of  the  fact  that  this  old  Puritan 
foundation  was  made   the    headquarters   of   the    American 


204 


FROM   BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 


Oriental  Society,  which  has  done  so  much  for  the  truth  in 
this  field.* 


V.   SUMMARY. 

It  may  be  instructive,  in  conclusion,  to  sum  up  briefly  the 
history  of  the  whole  struggle. 

First,  as  to  the  origin  of  speech,  we  have  in  the  begin- 
ning the  whole  Church  rallying  around  the  idea  that  the 
original  language  was  Hebrew  ;  that  this  language,  even  in- 
eluding  the  mediaeval  rabbinical  punctuation,  was  directly 
inspired  by  the  Almighty  ;  that  Adam  was  taught  it  by  God 
himself  in  walks  and  talks;  and  that  all  other  languages  were 
derived  from  it  at  the  "  confusion  of  Babel." 

Next,  we  see  parts  of  this  theory  fading  out:  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  rabbinical  points  begins  to  disappear  ;  Adam,  in- 
stead of  being  taught  directly  by  God,  is  "  inspired  "  by  him. 

Then  comes  the  third  stage:  advanced  theologians  en- 
deavour to  compromise  on  the  idea  that  Adam  was  "  given 
verbal  roots  and  a  mental  power." 

Finally,  in  our  time,  we  have  them  accepting  the  theory 
that  language  is  the  result  of  an  evolutionary  process  in 
obedience  to  laws  more  or  less  clearly  ascertained.  •  Babel 
thus  takes  its  place  quietly  among  the  sacred  myths. 

As  to  the  origin  of  writing,  we  have  the  more  eminent 
theologians  at  first  insisting  that  God  taught  Adam  to  write  ; 
next  we  find  them  gradually  retreating  from  this  position, 
but  insisting  that  writing  was  taught  to  the  world  by  Noah. 
After  the  retreat  from  this  position,  we  find  them  insisting 
that  it  was  Moses  whom  God  taught  to  write.  But  scientific 
modes  of  thought  still  progressed,  and  we  next  have  influen- 
tial theologians  agreeing  that  writing  was  a  Mosaic  inven- 
tion ;  this  is  followed  by  another  theological  retreat  to  the 
position  that  writing  was  a  post-Mosaic  invention.  Finally, 
all  the  positions  are  relinquished,  save  by  some  few  skirmish- 

*  For  Mr.  Gladstone's  view,  see  his  Impregnable  Rock  of  Holy  Scripture,  Lon- 
don, 1890,  pp.  241  et  sea.  The  passage  connecting  the  trident  of  Neptune  with  the 
Trinity  is  in  his  Juventus  Mundi.  To  any  American  boy  who  sees  how  inevitably, 
both  among  Indian  and  white  fishermen,  the  fish-spear  takes  the  three-pronged 
form,  this  utterance  of  Mr.  Gladstone  is  amazing. 


SUMMARY. 


205 


ers  who  appear  now  and  then  upon  the  horizon,  making  at- 
tempts to  defend  some  subtle  method  of  "  reconciling  "  the 
Babel  myth  with  modern  science. 

Just  after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  last 
stao-e  of  theological  defence  was  evidently  reached — the  same 
which  is  seen  in  the  history  of  almost  every  science  after  it 
has  successfully  fought  its  way  through  the  theological  pe- 
riod  the  declaration  which  we  have  already  seen  foreshad- 
owed by  Wiseman,  that  the  scientific  discoveries  in  question 
are  nothing  new,  but  have  really  always  been  known  and 
held  by  the  Church,  and  that  they  simply  substantiate  the 
position  taken  by  the  Church.  This  new  contention,  which 
always  betokens  the  last  gasp  of  theological  resistance  to 
science,  was  now  echoed  from  land  to  land.  In  1856  it  was 
given  forth  by  a  divine  of  the  Anglican  Church,  Archdeacon 
Pratt,  of  Calcutta.  He  gives  a  long  list  of  eminent  philolo- 
gists who  had  done  most  to  destroy  the  old  supernatural 
view  of  language,  reads  into  their  utterances  his  own  wishes, 
and  then  exclaims,  "  So  singularly  do  their  labours  confirm 
the  literal  truth  of  Scripture." 

Two  years  later  this  contention  was  echoed  from  the 
American  Presbyterian  Church,  and  Dr.  B.  W.  Dwight,  hav- 
ing stigmatized  as  "infidels"  those  who  had  not  incorpo- 
rated  into  their  science  the  literal  acceptance  of  Hebrew 
legend,  declared  that  "  chronology,  ethnography,  and  ety- 
mology have  all  been  tortured  in  vain  to  make  them  con- 
tradict the  Mosaic  account  of  the  early  history  of  man." 
Twelve  years  later  this  was  re-echoed  from  England.  The 
Rev.  Dr.  Baylee,  Principal  of  the  College  of  St.  Aidan's,  de- 
clared, "  With  regard  to  the  varieties  of  human  language, 
the  account  of  the  confusion  of  tongues  is  receiving  daily 
confirmation  by  all  the  recent  discoveries  in  comparative 
philology."  So,  too,  in  the  same  year  (1870),  in  the  United 
Presbyterian  Church  of  Scotland,  Dr.  John  Eadie,  Professor 
of  Biblical  Literature  and  Exegesis,  declared,  "  Comparative 
philology  has  established  the  miracle  of  Babel." 

A  skill  in  theology  and  casuistry  so  exquisite  as  to  con- 
trive such  assertions,  and  a  faith  so  robust  as  to  accept  them, 
certainly  leave  nothing  to  be  desired.  But  how  baseless 
these  contentions  are  is  shown,  first,  by  the  simple  history  of 


206  FROM    BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY. 

the  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  this  question  ;  and,  sec- 
ondly, by  the  fact  that  comparative  philology  now  reveals 
beyond  a  doubt  that  not  only  is  Hebrew  not  the  original  or 
oldest  language  upon  earth,  but  that  it  is  not  even  the  oldest 
form  in  the  Semitic  group  to  which  it  belongs.  To  use  the 
words  of  one  of  the  most  eminent  modern  authorities,  "It 
is  now  generally  recognised  that  in  grammatical  structure 
the  Arabic  preserves  much  more  of  the  original  forms  than 
either  the  Hebrew  or  Aramaic." 

History,  ethnology,  and  philology  now  combine  inexo- 
rably to  place  the  account  of  the  confusion  of  tongues  and 
the  dispersion  of  races  at  Babel  among  the  myths  ;  but  their 
work  has  not  been  merely  destructive  :  more  and  more  strong 
are  the  grounds  for  belief  in  an  evolution  of  language. 

A  very  complete  acceptance  of  the  scientific  doctrines 
has  been  made  by  Archdeacon  Farrar,  Canon  of  Westmin- 
ster. With  a  boldness  which  in  an  earlier  period  might  have 
cost  him  dear,  and  which  merits  praise  even  now  for  its  cour- 
age, he  says :  "  For  all  reasoners  except  that  portion  of  the 
clergy  who  in  all  ages  have  been  found  among  the  bitterest 
enemies  of  scientific  discovery,  these  considerations  have 
been  conclusive.  But,  strange  to  say,  here,  as  in  so  many 
other  instances,  this  self-styled  orthodoxy — more  orthodox 
than  the  Bible  itself — directly  contradicts  the  very  Scrip- 
tures which  it  professes  to  explain,  and  by  sheer  misrepre- 
sentation succeeds  in  producing  a  needless  and  deplorable 
collision  between  the  statements  of  Scripture  and  those  other 
mighty  and  certain  truths  which  have  been  revealed  to  sci- 
ence and  humanity  as  their  glory  and  reward." 

Still  another  acknowledgment  was  made  in  America 
through  the  instrumentality  of  a  divine  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  whom  the  present  generation  at  least  will 
hold  in  honour  not  only  for  his  scholarship  but  for  his  pa- 
triotism in  the  darkest  hour  of  his  country's  need — John  Mc- 
Clintock.  In  the  article  on  Language,  in  the  Biblical  Cyclo- 
pedia, edited  by  him  and  the  Rev.  Dr.  Strong,  which  ap- 
peared in  1873,  the  whole  sacred  theory  is  given  up,  and  the 
scientific  view  accepted.* 

*  For  Kayser,  see  his  work,  Ueber  die  Urspracke,  oder  iiber  cine  Bchauptung 


SUMMARY.  207 

It  may,  indeed,  be  now  fairly  said  that  the  thinking  lead- 
ers of  theology  have  come  to  accept  the  conclusions  of  sci- 
ence regarding  the  origin  of  language,  as  against  the  old 
explanations  by  myth  and  legend.  The  result  has  been  a 
blessing  both  to  science  and  to  religion.  No  harm  has  been 
done  to  religion  ;  what  has  been  done  is  to  release  it  from 
the  clog  of  theories  which  thinking  men  saw  could  no  longer 
be  maintained.  No  matter  what  has  become  of  the  naming 
of  the  animals  by  Adam,  of  the  origin  of  the  name  Babel,  of 
the  fear  of  the  Almighty  lest  men  might  climb  up  into  his 
realm  above  the  firmament,  and  of  the  confusion  of  tongues 
and  the  dispersion  of  nations ;  the  essentials  of  Christianity, 
as  taught  by  its  blessed  Founder,  have  simply  been  freed, 
by  Comparative  Philology,  from  one  more  great  incubus,  and 
have  therefore  been  left  to  work  with  more  power  upon  the 
hearts  and  minds  of  mankind. 

Nor  has  any  harm  been  done  to  the  Bible.  On  the  con- 
trary, this  divine  revelation  through  science  has  made  it  all 
the  more  precious  to  us.  In  these  myths  and  legends  caught 
from  earlier  civilizations  we  see  an  evolution  of  the  most 
important  religious  and  moral  truths  for  our  race.     Myth, 

Mods,  dass  alle  Sprachen  der  Welt  von  einer  einzigen  der  Noachischen  abstammen, 
Erlangen,  1840  ;  see  especially  pp.  5,  So,  95,  112.  For  Wiseman,  see  his  Lectures 
on  the  Connection  between  Science  and  Revealed  Religion,  London,  1836.  For 
examples  typical  of  very  many  in  this  field,  see  the  works  of  Pratt,  1856  ;  Dwight, 
1858  ;  Jamieson,  1868.  For  citation  from  Gumming,  see  his  Great  Tribulation, 
London,  1S59,  p.  4  ;  see  also  his  Things  Hard  to  be  Understood,  London,  1861,  p. 
48.  For  an  admirable  summary  of  the  work  of  the  great  modern  philologists,  and 
a  most  careful  estimate  of  the  conclusions  reached,  see  Prof.  Whitney's  article  on 
Philology  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  A  copy  of  Mr.  Atkinson's  book  is  in 
the  Harvard  College  Library,  it  having  been  presented  by  the  Trustees  of  the  Pub- 
lic Library  of  Victoria.  For  Galloway,  see  his  Philosophy  of  the  Creation,  Edin- 
burgh and  London,  1SS5,  pp.  21,  238,  239,  446.  For  citation  from  Raylee,  see  his 
Verbal  Inspbation  the  True  Characteristic  of  God's  Holy  Word,  London,  1870,  p. 
14  and  elsewhere.  For  Archdeacon  Pratt,  see  his  Scripture  and  Science  net  at  Va- 
riance, London,  1856,  p.  55.  For  the  citation  from  Dr.  Eadie,  see  his  Biblical  Cy- 
clopaedia, London,  1870,  p.  53.  For  Dr.  Dwight,  see  The  New-Englander,  vol.  xvi, 
p.  465.  For  the  theological  article  referred  to  as  giving  up  the  sacred  theory,  see 
the  Cyclopedia  of  Biblical,  Theological,  and  Ecclesiastical  Literature,  prepared  by 
Rev.  John  McClintock,  D.  D.,  and  James  Strong,  New  York,  1S73,  vol.  v,  p.  233. 
For  Arabic  as  an  earlier  Semitic  development  than  Hebrew,  as  well  as  for  much 
other  valuable  information  on  the  questions  recently  raised,  see  article  Hcb 
W.  R.  Smith,  in  the  latest  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  For  quotation 
from  Canon  Farrar,  see  his  Language  and  Languages,  London,  1878,  pp.  6,  7. 


2o8  FROM   BABEL   TO   COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY. 

legend,  and  parable  seem,  in  obedience  to  a  divine  law,  the 
necessary  setting  for  these  truths,  as  they  are  successively 
evolved,  ever  in  higher  and  higher  forms.  What  matters  it, 
then,  that  we  have  come  to  know  that  the  accounts  of  Crea- 
tion, the  Fall,  the  Deluge,  and  much  else  in  our  sacred  books, 
were  remembrances  of  lore  obtained  from  the  Chaldeans? 
What  matters  it  that  the  beautiful  story  of  Joseph  is  found 
to  be  in  part  derived  from  an  Egyptian  romance,  of  which 
the  hieroglyphs  may  still  be  seen  ?  What  matters  it  that  the 
story  of  David  and  Goliath  is  poetry ;  and  that  Samson,  like 
so  many  men  of  strength  in  other  religions,  is  probably  a 
sun-myth?  What  matters  it  that  the  inculcation  of  high 
duty  in  the  childhood  of  the  world  is  embodied  in  such 
quaint  stories  as  those  of  Jonah  and  Balaam  ?  The  more  we 
realize  these  facts,  the  richer  becomes  that  great  body  of  lit- 
erature brought  together  within  the  covers  of  the  Bible. 
What  matters  it  that  those  who  incorporated  the  Creation 
lore  of  Babylonia  and  other  Oriental  nations  into  the  sacred 
books  of  the  Hebrews,  mixed  it  with  their  own  conceptions 
and  deductions?  What  matters  it  that  Darwin  changed  the 
whole  aspect  of  our  Creation  myths  ;  that  Lyell  and  his  com- 
peers placed  the  Hebrew  story  of  Creation  and  of  the  Del- 
uge of  Noah  among  legends ;  that  Copernicus  put  an  end  to 
the  standing  still  of  the  sun  for  Joshua  ;  that  Halley,  in  pro- 
mulgating his  law  of  comets,  put  an  end  to  the  doctrine  of 
"signs  and  wonders";  that  Pinel,  in  showing  that  all  insan- 
ity is  physical  disease,  relegated  to  the  realm  of  mythology 
the  witch  of  Endor  and  all  stories  of  demoniacal  possession  ; 
that  the  Rev.  Dr.  Schaff,  and  a  multitude  of  recent  Christian 
travellers  in  Palestine,  have  put  into  the  realm  of  legend  the 
story  of  Lot's  wife  transformed  into  a  pillar  of  salt ;  that  the 
anthropologists,  by  showing  how  man  has  risen  everywhere 
from  low  and  brutal  beginnings,  have  destroyed  the  whole 
theological  theory  of  "  the  fall  of  man  "  ?  Our  great  body  of 
sacred  literature  is  thereby  only  made  more  and  more  valu- 
able to  us :  more  and  more  we  see  how  long  and  patiently 
the  forces  in  the  universe  which  make  for  righteousness 
have  been  acting  in  and  upon  mankind  through  the  only 
agencies  fitted  for  such  work  in  the  earliest  ages  of  the  world 
— through  myth,  legend,  parable,  and  poem. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

FROM  THE  DEAD  SEA  LEGENDS  TO  COMPARATIVE 
MYTHOLOGY. 

I.  THE  GROWTH  OF  EXPLANATORY  TRANSFORMATION  MYTHS. 

A  few  years  since,  Maxime  Du  Camp,  an  eminent  mem- 
ber of  the  French  Academy,  travelling  from  the  Red  Sea  to 
the  Nile  through  the  Desert  of  Kosseir,  came  to  a  barren 
slope  covered  with  boulders,  rounded  and  glossy. 

His  Mohammedan  camel-driver  accounted  for  them  on 
this  wise : 

"  Many  years  ago  Hadji  Abdul- Aziz,  a  sheik  of  the  der- 
vishes, was  travelling  on  foot  through  this  desert:  it  was 
summer :  the  sun  was  hot  and  the  dust  stifling  ;  thirst  parched 
his  lips,  fatigue  weighed  down  his  back,  sweat  dropped  from 
his  forehead,  when  looking  up  he  saw — on  this  very  spot — a 
garden  beautifully  green,  full  of  fruit,  and,  in  the  midst  of 
it,  the  gardener. 

"  '  O  fellow-man,'  cried  Hadji  Abdul-Aziz,  '  in  the  name 
of  Allah,  clement  and  merciful,  give  me  a  melon  and  I  will 
give  you  my  prayers.' 

"  The  gardener  answered  :  '  I  care  not  for  your  prayers  ; 
give  me  money,  and  I  will  give  you  fruit.' 

" '  But,'  said  the  dervish,  'lama  beggar ;  I  have  never 
had  money  ;  I  am  thirsty  and  weary,  and  one  of  your  melons 
is  all  that  I  need.' 

"'No,'  said  the  gardener;  'go  to  the  Nile  and  quench 
your  thirst.' 

"Thereupon  the  dervish,  lifting  his  eyes  toward  heaven, 

made  this  prayer:  'O  Allah,  thou  who  in  the  midst  of  the 

desert  didst  make  the  fountain  of  Zem-Zem  spring  forth  to 

satisfy  the  thirst  of  Ismail,  father  of  the  faithful :  wilt  thou 

42  209 


2io  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

suffer  one  of  thy  creatures  to  perish  thus  of  thirst  and 
fatigue?' 

"And  it  came  to  pass  that,  hardly  had  the  dervish 
spoken,  when  an  abundant  dew  descended  upon  him, 
quenching  his  thirst  and  refreshing  him  even  to  the  mar- 
row of  his  bones. 

"  Now  at  the  sight  of  this  miracle  the  gardener  knew  that 
the  dervish  was  a  holy  man,  beloved  of  Allah,  and  straight- 
way offered  him  a  melon. 

"  '  Not  so,'  answered  Hadji  Abdul-Aziz  ;  '  keep  what  thou 
hast,  thou  wicked  man.  May  thy  melons  become  as  hard  as 
thy  heart,  and  thy  field  as  barren  as  thy  soul ! ' 

"  And  straightway  it  came  to  pass  that  the  melons  were 
changed  into  these  blocks  of  stone,  and  the  grass  into  this 
sand,  and  never  since  has  anything  grown  thereon." 

In  this  story,  and  in  myriads  like  it,  we  have  a  survival 
of  that  early  conception  of  the  universe  in  which  so  many  of 
the  leading  moral  and  religious  truths  of  the  great  sacred 
books  of  the  world  are  imbedded. 

All  ancient  sacred  lore  abounds  in  such  mythical  explana- 
tions of  remarkable  appearances  in  nature,  and  these  are 
most  frequently  prompted  by  mountains,  rocks,  and  boulders 
seemingly  misplaced. 

In  India  we  have  such  typical  examples  among  the  Brah- 
mans  as  the  mountain-peak  which  Durgu  threw  at  Parvati ; 
and  among  the  Buddhists  the  stone  which  Devadatti  hurled 
at  Buddha. 

In  Greece  the  Athenian,  rejoicing  in  his  belief  that  Athena 
guarded  her  chosen  people,  found  it  hard  to  understand  why 
the  great  rock  Lycabettus  should  be  just  too  far  from  the 
Acropolis  to  be  of  use  as  an  outwork  ;  but  a  myth  was  de- 
veloped which  explained  all.  According  to  this,  Athena  had 
intended  to  make  Lycabettus  a  defence  for  the  Athenians,  and 
she  was  bringing  it  through  the  air  from  Pallene  for  that  very 
purpose  ;  but,  unfortunately,  a  raven  met  her  and  informed 
her  of  the  wonderful  birth  of  Erichthonius,  which  so  surprised 
the  goddess  that  she  dropped  the  rock  where  it  now  stands. 

So,  too,  a  peculiar  rock  at  ^Egina  was  accounted  for  by 
a  long  and  circumstantial  legend  to  the  effect  that  Peleus 
threw  it  at  Phocas. 


GROWTH   OF    EXPLANATORY   TRANSFORMATION    MYTHS.  2II 

A  similar  mode  of  explaining  such  objects  is  seen  in  the 
mythologies  of  northern  Europe.  In  Scandinavia  we  con- 
stantly find  rocks  which  tradition  accounts  for  by  declaring 
that  they  were  hurled  by  the  old  gods  at  each  other,  or  at 
the  early  Christian  churches. 

In  Teutonic  lands,  as  a  rule,  wherever  a  strange  rock 
or  stone  is  found,  there  will  be  found  a  myth  or  a  legend, 
heathen  or  Christian,  to  account  for  it. 

So,  too,  in  Celtic  countries:  typical  of  this  mode  of 
thought  in  Brittany  and  in  Ireland  is  the  popular  belief  that 
such  features  in  the  landscape  were  dropped  by  the  devil  or 
by  fairies. 

Even  at  a  much  later  period  such  myths  have  grown  and 
bloomed.  Marco  Polo  gives  a  long  and  circumstantial  legend 
of  a  mountain  in  Asia  Minor  which,  not  long  before  his  visit, 
was  removed  by  a  Christian  who,  having  "faith  as  a  grain 
of  mustard  seed,"  and  remembering  the  Saviour's  promise, 
transferred  the  mountain  to  its  present  place  by  prayer,  "  at 
which  marvel  many  Saracens  became  Christians."* 

Similar  mythical  explanations  are  also  found,  in  all  the 
older  religions  of  the  world,  for  curiously  marked  meteoric 
stones,  fossils,  and  the  like. 

Typical  examples  are  found  in  the  imprint  of  Buddha's 
feet  on  stones  in  Siam  and  Ceylon  ;  in  the  imprint  of  the 
body  of  Moses,  which  down  to  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
was  shown  near  Mount  Sinai ;  in  the  imprint  of  Poseidon's  tri- 
dent on  the  Acropolis  at  Athens  ;  in  the  imprint  of  the  hands 

*  For  Maxime  Du  Camp,  see  Le  Nil:  Egypte  et  Nubie,  Paris,  1877,  chapter  v. 
For  India,  see  Duncker,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  vol.  iii,  p.  366  ;  also  Coleman, 
Mythology  of  the  Hindus,  p.  go.  For  Greece,  as  to  the  Lycabettus  myth,  see 
Leake,  Topography  of  Athens,  vol.  i,  sec.  3  ;  also  Burnouf,  La  Ligende  A th/n ten ne, 
p.  152.  For  the  rock  at  Mgmz,  see  Charton,  vol.  i,  p.  310.  For  Scandinavia,  see 
Thorpe,  Northern  Antiquities, passim.  For  Teutonic  countries,  see  Grimm,  Deutsche 
Mythologie  ;  Panzer,  Beitrag  zur  deutschen  Mythologie,  vol.  ii  ;  Zingerle,  Sagen  aus 
Tyrol,  pp.  in  et  seq.,  488,  504,  543  ;  and  especially  J.  B.  Friedrich,  Symbolik  und 
Mythologie  der  Natur,  pp.  116  et  seq.  For  Celtic  examples  I  am  indebted  to  that 
learned  and  genial  scholar,  Prof.  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  Sec 
also  story  of  the  devil  dropping  a  rock  when  forced  by  the  archangel  Michael  to 
aid  him  in  building  Mont  Saint-Michel  on  the  west  coast  of  France,  in  Sebilln's 
Traditions  de  la  Haute-Bretagne,  vol.  i,  p.  22  ;  also  multitudes  of  other  examples 
in  the  same  work.  For  Marco  Polo,  see  in  Grynseus,  p.  337  ;  also  Charton,  Voya- 
geurs  anciens  et  moderues,  tome  ii,  pp.  274  et  seq.,  where  the  legend  is  given  in  full. 


212  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

or  feet  of  Christ  on  stones  in  France,  Italy,  and  Palestine ; 
in  the  imprint  of  the  Virgin's  tears  on  stones  at  Jerusalem  ; 
in  the  imprint  of  the  feet  of  Abraham  at  Jerusalem  and  of 
Mohammed  on  a  stone  in  the  Mosque  of  Khait  Bey  at  Cairo ; 
in  the  imprint  of  the  fingers  of  giants  on  stones  in  the  Scandi- 
navian Peninsula,  in  north  Germany,  and  in  western  France  ; 
in  the  imprint  of  the  devil's  thighs  on  a  rock  in  Brittany,  and 
of  his  claws  on  stones  which  he  threw  at  churches  in  Cologne 
and  Saint-Pol-de-Leon  ;  in  the  imprint  of  the  shoulder  of  the 
devil's  grandmother  on  the  "elbow-stone"  at  the  Mohriner- 
see ;  in  the  imprint  of  St.  Otho's  feet  on  a  stone  formerly 
preserved  in  the  castle  church  at  Stettin  ;  in  the  imprint  of 
the  little  finger  of  Christ  and  the  head  of  Satan  at  Ehren- 
berg  ;  and  in  the  imprint  of  the  feet  of  St.  Agatha  at  Ca- 
tania, in  Sicily.  To  account  for  these  appearances  and 
myriads  of  others,  long  and  interesting  legends  were  de- 
veloped, and  out  of  this  mass  we  may  take  one  or  two  as 
typical. 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  was  evolved  at  Rome.  On  the 
border  of  the  mediaeval  city  stands  the  church  of  "  Domine 
quo  vadis  "  ;  it  was  erected  in  honour  of  a  stone,  which  is 
still  preserved,  bearing  a  mark  resembling  a  human  foot- 
print— perhaps  the  bed  of  a  fossil. 

Out  of  this  a  pious  legend  grew  as  naturally  as  a  wild 
rose  in  a  prairie.  According  to  this  story,  in  one  of  the  first 
great  persecutions  the  heart  of  St.  Peter  failed  him,  and  he 
attempted  to  flee  from  the  city :  arriving  outside  the  walls 
he  was  suddenly  confronted  by  the  Master,  whereupon 
Peter  in  amazement  asked,  "  Lord,  whither  goest  thou?" 
(Domine  quo  vadis?);  to  which  the  Master  answered,  "  To 
Rome,  to  be  crucified  again."  The  apostle,  thus  rebuked, 
returned  to  martyrdom  ;  the  Master  vanished,  but  left,  as  a 
perpetual  memorial,  his  footprint  in  the  solid  rock. 

Another  legend  accounts  for  a  curious  mark  in  a  stone  at 
Jerusalem.  According  to  this,  St.  Thomas,  after  the  ascen- 
sion of  the  Lord,  was  again  troubled  with  doubts,  where- 
upon the  Virgin  Mother  threw  down  her  girdle,  which  left 
its  imprint  upon  the  rock,  and  thus  converted  the  doubter 
fully  and  finally. 

And  still  another  example  is  seen  at  the  very  opposite 


GROWTH   OF    EXPLANATORY   TRANSFORMATION   MYTHS.  2 1  T. 

extreme  of  Europe,  in  the  legend  of  the  priestess  of  Hertha 
in  the  island  of  Rugen.  She  had  been  unfaithful  to  her 
vows,  and  the  gods  furnished  a  proof  of  her  guilt  by  caus- 
ing her  and  her  child  to  sink  into  the  rock  on  which  she 
stood.* 

Another  and  very  fruitful  source  of  explanatory  myths  is 
found  in  ancient  centres  of  volcanic  action,  and  especially  in 
old  craters  of  volcanoes  and  fissures  filled  with  water. 

In  China  we  have,  among  other  examples,  Lake  Man, 
which  was  once  the  site  of  the  flourishing  city  Chiang  Shui — 
overwhelmed  and  sunk  on  account  of  the  heedlessness  of  its 
inhabitants  regarding  a  divine  warning. 

In  Phrygia,  the   lake  and   morass   near  Tyana  were  as- 

*  For  myths  and  legends  crystallizing  about  boulders  and  other  stones  curiously 
shaped  or  marked,  see,  on  the  general  subject,  in  addition  to  works  already  cited, 
Des  Brasses,  Les  Dicux  Fetiches,  1760,  passim,  but  especially  pp.  166,  167  ;  and  for 
a  condensed  statement  as  to  worship  paid  them,  see  Gerard  de  Rialle,  Mythologie 
compare'e,  vol.  vi,  chapter  ii.  For  imprints  of  Buddha's  feet,  see  Tylor,  Researches 
into  the  Early  History  of  Mankind,  London,  1878,  pp.  115  et  seq.  ;  also  Coleman, 
p.  203,  and  Charton,  Voyagenrs  anciens  et  modernes,  tome  i,  pp.  365,  366,  where 
engravings  of  one  of  the  imprints,  and  of  the  temple  above  another,  are  seen.  There 
are  five  which  are  considered  authentic  by  the  Siamese,  and  a  multitude  of  others 
more  or  less  strongly  insisted  upon.  For  the  imprint  of  Moses'  body,  see  travellers 
from  Sir  John  Mandeville  down.  For  the  mark  of  Neptune's  trident,  see  last 
edition  of  Murray's  Handbook  of  Greece,  vol.  i,  p.  322  ;  and  Burnouf,  La  Legende 
Athe'nienne,  p.  153.  For  imprint  of  the  feet  of  Christ,  and  of  the  Virgin's  girdle  and 
tears,  see  many  of  the  older  travellers  in  Palestine,  as  Arculf,  Bouchard,  Roger,  and 
especially  Bertrandon  de  la  Brocquiere  in  Wright's  collection,  pp.  339,  340;  also 
Maundrell's  Travels,  and  Mandeville.  For  the  curious  legend  regarding  the  im- 
print of  Abraham's  foot,  see  Weil,  Biblische  Legenden  der  Mtiselmanner,  pp.  91 
et  seq.  For  many  additional  examples  in  Palestine,  particularly  the  imprints  of  the 
bodies  of  three  apostles  on  stones  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane  and  of  St.  Jerome's 
body  in  the  desert,  see  Beauvau,  Relation  du  Voyage  du  Levant,  Nancy,  1615, 
passim.  For  the  various  imprints  made  by  Satan  and  giants  in  Scandinavia  and 
Germany,  see  Thorpe,  vol.  ii,  p.  85  ;  Friedrichs,  pp.  126  and  passim.  For  a  very 
rich  collection  of  such  explanatory  legends  regarding  stones  and  marks  in  Germany, 
see  Karl  Bartsch,  Sagen,  Marchen  und  Gebrduche  aits  Meklenburg,  Wien,  1S80, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  420  et  seq.  For  a  woodcut  representing  the  imprint  of  St.  Agatha's  feet 
at  Catania,  see  Charton,  as  above,  vol  ii,  p.  75.  For  a  woodcut  representing  the 
imprint  of  Christ's  feet  on  the  stone  from  which  he  ascended  to  heaven,  see  wood- 
cut in  Mandeville,  edition  of  1484,  in  the  White  Library,  Cornell  University.  For 
the  legend  of  Domine  quo  vadis,  see  many  books  of  travel  and  nearly  all  guide  books 
for  Rome,  from  the  mediaeval  Mirabilia  Ronnv  to  the  latest  edition  of  Murray.  The 
footprints  of  Mohammed  at  Cairo  were  shown  to  the  present  writer  in  1889.  On 
the  general  subject,  with  many  striking  examples,  see  Falsan,  La  Pe'riode  glaciairc, 
Paris,  1889,  pp.  17,  294,  295. 


2i4  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS    TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

cribed  to  the  wrath  of  Zeus  and  Hermes,  who,  having 
visited  the  cities  which  formerly  stood  there,  and  having 
been  refused  shelter  by  all  the  inhabitants  save  Philemon 
and  Baucis,  rewarded  their  benefactors,  but  sunk  the  wicked 
cities  beneath  the  lake  and  morass. 

Stories  of  similar  import  grew  up  to  explain  the  crater 
near  Sipylos  in  Asia  Minor  and  that  of  Avernus  in  Italy  : 
the  latter  came  to  be  considered  the  mouth  of  the  infernal 
regions,  as  every  schoolboy  knows  when  he  has  read  his 
Virgil. 

In  the  later  Christian  mythologies  we  have  such  typical 
legends  as  those  which  grew  up  about  the  old  crater  in 
Ceylon ;  the  salt  water  in  it  being  accounted  for  by  suppos- 
ing it  the  tears  of  Adam  and  Eve,  who  retreated  to  this 
point  after  their  expulsion  from  paradise  and  bewailed  their 
sin  during  a  hundred  years. 

So,  too,  in  Germany  we  have  multitudes  of  lakes  sup- 
posed to  owe  their  origin  to  the  sinking  of  valleys  as  a  pun- 
ishment for  human  sin.  Of  these  are  the  "  Devil's  Lake," 
near  Giistrow,  which  rose  and  covered  a  church  and  its 
priests  on  account  of  their  corruption ;  the  lake  at  Probst- 
Jesar,  which  rose  and  covered  an  oak  grove  and  a  number 
of  peasants  resting  in  it  on  account  of  their  want  of  charity 
to  beggars  ;  and  the  Lucin  Lake,  which  rose  and  covered 
a  number  of  soldiers  on  account  of  their  cruelty  to  a  poor 
peasant. 

Such  legends  are  found  throughout  America  and  in 
Japan,  and  will  doubtless  be  found  throughout  Asia  and 
Africa,  and  especially  among  the  volcanic  lakes  of  South 
America,  the  pitch  lakes  of  the  Caribbean  Islands,  and  even 
about  the  Salt  Lake  of  Utah  ;  for  explanatory  myths  and 
legends  under  such  circumstances  are  inevitable.* 

*  As  to  myths  explaining  volcanic  craters  and  lakes,  and  embodying  ideas  of 
the  wrath  of  Heaven  against  former  inhabitants  of  the  neighbouring  country,  see 
Forbiger,  Alte  Geographic,  Hamburg,  1877,  vol.  i,  p.  563.  For  exaggerations  con- 
cerning the  Dead  Sea,  see  ibid.,  vol.  i,  p.  575.  For  the  sinking  of  Chiang  Shui  and 
other  examples,  see  Denny's  Folklore  of  China,  pp.  126  et  sea.  For  the  sinking  of 
the  Phrygian  region,  the  destruction  of  its  inhabitants,  and  the  saving  of  Philemon 
and  Baucis,  see  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  book  viii  ;  also  Botticher,  Banmcultus  der 
Altai,  etc.  For  the  lake  in  Ceylon  arising  from  the  tears  of  Adam  and  Eve,  see 
variants  of  the  original  legend  in   Mandeville  and  in  Jiirgen  Andersen,  Reisebe- 


GROWTH   OF    EXPLANATORY   TRANSFORMATION    MYTHS.  215 

To  the  same  manner  of  explaining  striking  appearances 
in  physical  geography,  and  especially  strange  rocks  and 
boulders,  we  mainly  owe  the  innumerable  stories  of  the 
transformation  of  living  beings,  and  especially  of  men  and 
women,  into  these  natural  features. 

In  the  mythology  of  China  we  constantly  come  upon 
legends  of  such  transformations — from  that  of  the  first  coun- 
sellor of  the  Han  dynasty  to  those  of  shepherds  and  sheep. 
In  the  Brahmanic  mythology  of  India,  Salagrama,  the  fossil 
ammonite,  is  recognised  as  containing  the  body  of  Vishnu's 
wife,  and  the  Binlang  stone  has  much  the  same  relation  to 
Siva;  so,  too,  the  nymph  Ramba  was  changed,  for  offending 
Ketu,  into  a  mass  of  sand  ;  by  the  breath  of  Siva  elephants 
were  turned  into  stone ;  and  in  a  very  touching  myth  Lux- 
man  is  changed  into  stone  but  afterward  released.  In  the 
Buddhist  mythology  a  Nat  demon  is  represented  as  chang- 
ing himself  into  a  grain  of  sand. 

Among  the  Greeks  such  transformation  myths  come  con- 
stantly before  us— both  the  changing  of  stones  to  men  and 
the  changing  of  men  to  stones.  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha,  es- 
caping from  the  flood,  repeopled  the  earth  by  casting  behind 
them  stones  which  became  men  and  women  ;  Heraulos  was 
changed  into  stone  for  offending  Mercury ;  Pyrrhus  for 
offending  Rhea;  Phineus,  and  Polydectes  with  his  guests, 
for  offending  Perseus:  under  the  petrifying  glance  of  Me- 
dusa's head  such  transformations  became  a  thing  of  course. 

To  myth-making  in  obedience  to  the  desire  of  explaining 
unusual  natural  appearances,  coupled  with  the  idea  that  sin 
must  be  followed  by  retribution,  we  also  owe  the  well-known 
Niobe  myth.  Having  incurred  the  divine  wrath,  Niobe  saw 
those  dearest  to  her  destroyed  by  missiles  from  heaven,  and 
was  finally  transformed  into  a  rock  on  Mount  Sipylos  which 
bore  some  vague  resemblance  to  the  human  form,  and  her 


schreibung,  1669,  vol.  ii,  p.  132.  For  the  volcanic  nature  of  the  Dead  Sea,  see 
Daubeny!  cited  in  Smith's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  s.  v.  Palestine.  For  lakes  in  Ger- 
many owing  their  origin  to  human  sin  and  various  supernatural  causes,  see  Karl 
Bartsch,  Sag  en,  Marchen  und  Gebrauche  aits  Meklenburg,  vol.  i,  pp.  397  etseq. 
For  lakes  in  Americr,  see  any  good  collection  of  Indian  legends.  For  lakes  in 
Japan  sunk  supernaturally,  see  Braun's  Japanesische  Marchen  und  Sagen,  Leipsic, 
1885,  pp.  350,  351. 


2i6  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

tears  became  the  rivulets  which  trickled  from  the  neighbour- 
ing strata. 

Thus,  in  obedience  to  a  moral  and  intellectual  impulse,  a 
striking  geographical  appearance  was  explained,  and  for 
ages  pious  Greeks  looked  with  bated  breath  upon  the  rock 
at  Sipylos  which  was  once  Niobe,  just  as  for  ages  pious 
Jews,  Christians,  and  Mohammedans  looked  with  awe  upon 
the  salt  pillar  at  the  Dead  Sea  which  was  once  Lot's  wife. 

Pausanias,  one  of  the  most  honest  of  ancient  travellers, 
gives  us  a  notable  exhibition  of  this  feeling.  Having  visited 
this  monument  of  divine  vengeance  at  Mount  Sipylos,  he 
tells  us  very  naively  that,  though  he  could  discern  no  human 
features  when  standing  near  it,  he  thought  that  he  could 
see  them  when  standing  at  a  distance.  There  could  hardly 
be  a  better  example  of  that  most  common  and  deceptive  of 
all  things — belief  created  by  the  desire  to  believe. 

In  the  pagan  mythology  of  Scandinavia  we  have  such 
typical  examples  as  Bors  slaying  the  giant  Ymir  and  trans- 
forming his  bones  into  boulders ;  also  "  the  giant  who  had 
no  heart "  transforming  six  brothers  and  their  wives  into 
stone ;  and,  in  the  old  Christian  mythology,  St.  Olaf  chang- 
ing into  stone  the  wicked  giants  who  opposed  his  preaching. 

So,  too,  in  Celtic  countries  we  have  in  Ireland  such 
legends  as  those  of  the  dancers  turned  into  stone;  and,  in 
Brittany,  the  stones  at  Plesse,  which  were  once  hunters  and 
dogs  violating  the  sanctity  of  Sunday ;  and  the  stones  of 
Carnac,  which  were  once  soldiers  who  sought  to  kill  St. 
Comely. 

Teutonic  mythology  inherited  from  its  earlier  Eastern 
days  a  similar  mass  of  old  legends,  and  developed  a  still 
greater  mass  of  new  ones.  Thus,  near  the  Konigstein,  which 
all  visitors  to  the  Saxon  Switzerland  know  so  well,  is  a  boulder 
which  for  ages  was  believed  to  have  once  been  a  maiden  trans- 
formed into  stone  for  refusing  to  go  to  church  ;  and  near 
Rosenberg  in  Mecklenburg  is  another  curiously  shaped 
stone  of  which  a  similar  story  is  told.  Near  Spornitz,  in 
the  same  region,  are  seven  boulders  whose  forms  and  posi- 
tion are  accounted  for  by  a  long  and  circumstantial  legend 
that  they  were  once  seven  impious  herdsmen ;  near  Brahls- 
dorf  is  a  stone  which,  according  to  a  similar  explanatory 


GROWTH   OF   EXPLANATORY   TRANSFORMATION    MYTHS.  2I7 

myth,  was  once  a  blasphemous  shepherd  ;  near  Schwerin 
are  three  boulders  which  were  once  wasteful  servants ;  and 
at  Neustadt,  down  to  a  recent  period,  was  shown  a  collec- 
tion of  stones  which  were  once  a  bride  and  bridegroom  with 
their  horses — all  punished  for  an  act  of  cruelty  ;  and  these 
stories  are  but  typical  of  thousands. 

At  the  other  extremity  of  Europe  we  may  take,  out  of 
the  multitude  of  explanatory  myths,  that  which  grew  about 
the  well-known  group  of  boulders  near  Belgrade.  In  the 
midst  of  them  stands  one  larger  than  the  rest :  according  to 
the  legend  which  was  developed  to  account  for  all  these, 
there  once  lived  there  a  swineherd,  who  was  disrespectful  to 
the  consecrated  Host ;  whereupon  he  was  changed  into  the 
larger  stone,  and  his  swine  into  the  smaller  ones.  So  also  at 
Saloniki  we  have  the  pillars  of  the  ruined  temple,  which  are 
widely  believed,  especially  among  the  Jews  of  that  region, 
to  have  once  been  human  beings,  and  are  therefore  known 
as  the  "  enchanted  columns." 

Among  the  Arabs  we  have  an  addition  to  our  sacred  ac- 
count of  Adam — the  legend  of  the  black  stone  of  the  Caaba 
at  Mecca,  into  which  the  angel  was  changed  who  was  charged 
by  the  Almighty  to  keep  Adam  away  from  the  forbidden 
fruit,  and  who  neglected  his  duty. 

Similar  old  transformation  legends  are  abundant  among 
the  Indians  of  America,  the  negroes  of  Africa,  and  the  natives 
of  Australia  and  the  Pacific  islands. 

Nor  has  this  making  of  myths  to  account  for  remarkable 
appearances  yet  ceased,  even  in  civilized  countries. 

About  the  beginning  of  this  century  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Weimar,  smitten  with  the  classical  mania  of  his  time,  placed 
in  the  public  park  near  his  palace  a  little  altar,  and  upon  this 
was  carved,  after  the  manner  so  frequent  in  classical  antiquity, 
a  serpent  taking  a  cake  from  it.  And  shortly  there  appeared, 
in  the  town  and  the  country  round  about,  a  legend  to  explain 
this  altar  and  its  decoration.  It  was  commonly  said  that  a 
huge  serpent  had  laid  waste  that  region  in  the  olden  time, 
until  a  wise  and  benevolent  baker  had  rid  the  world  of  the 
monster  by  means  of  a  poisoned  biscuit. 

So,  too,  but  a  few  years  since,  in  the  heart  of  the  State 
of  New  York,  a  swindler  of  genius  having  made  and  buried 


2i3   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

a  "  petrified  giant,"  one  theologian  explained  it  by  declaring 
it  a  Phoenician  idol,  and  published  the  Phoenician  inscription 
which  he  thought  he  had  found  upon  it;  others  saw  in  it 
proofs  that  "  there  were  giants  in  those  days,"  and  within  a 
week  after  its  discovery  myths  were  afloat  that  the  neigh- 
bouring remnant  of  the  Onondaga  Indians  had  traditions  of 
giants  who  frequently  roamed  through  that  region.* 

*  For  transformation  myths  and  legends,  identifying  rocks  and  stones  with  gods 
and  heroes,  see  Welcker,  Gotterlehrc,  vol.  i,  p.  220.  For  recent  and  more  acces- 
sible statements  for  the  general  reader,  see  Robertson  Smith's  admirable  Lectures 
on  the  Religio7i  of  the  Semites,  Edinburgh,  1889,  pp.  86  et  sea.  For  some  thought- 
ful remarks  on  the  ancient  adoration  of  stones  rather  than  statues,  with  reference 
to  the  anointing  of  the  stones  at  Bethel  by  Jacob,  see  Dodwell,  Tour  through 
Greece,  vol.  ii,  p.  172  ;  also  Robertson  Smith  as  above,  Lecture  V.  For  Chinese 
transformation  legends,  see  Denny's  Folklore  of  China,  pp.  96,  128.  For  Hindu 
and  other  ancient  legends  of  transformations,  see  Dawson,  Dictionary  of  Hindu 
Mythology  ;  also  Coleman  as  above  ;  also  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  ATations,  pp. 
81-97,  etc.  For  such  transformations  in  Greece,  see  the  Iliad,  and  Ovid  as  above  ; 
also  Stark,  ATiobe  und  die  Niobiden,  p.  444  and  elsewhere  ;  also  Preller,  Griechische 
Mythologie,  passim;  also  Baumeister,  Detikmaler  des  classischen  Alterthums,  arti- 
cle Niobe ;  also  Botticher  as  above  ;  also  Curtius,  Griechische  Geschichte,  vol.  i, 
pp.  71,  72.  For  Pausanius's  naive  confession  regarding  the  Sipylos  rock,  see  book 
i,  p.  215.  See  also  Texier,  Asie  Mineure,  pp.  265  etseq.  ;  also  Chandler,  Travels  in 
Greece,  vol.  ii,  p  80,  who  seems  to  hold  to  the  later  origin  of  the  statue.  At  the 
end  of  Baumeister  there  is  an  engraving  copied  from  Stuart  which  seems  to  show 
that,  as  to  the  Niobe  legend,  at  a  later  period  Art  was  allowed  to  help  Nature.  For 
the  general  subject,  see  Scheiffle,  Prograrnm  des  K.  Gymnasiums  in  Ellwangen  .*  My- 
thologische  Parallelen,  1865.  For  Scandinavian  and  Teutonic  transformation 
legends,  see  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mythologie,  vierte  Ausg.,  vol.  i,  p.  457  ;  also  Thorpe, 
Northern  Antiquities  ;  also  Friedrich,/tf.cn/;z,  especially  pp.  116  et  seq.  ;  also,  for  a 
mass  of  very  curious  ones,  Karl  Bartsch,  Sagen,  Mdrchen  und  Gebrduche  aus  Mek- 
lenburg,  vol.  i,  pp.  420  et  seq.  ;  also  Karl  Simrock's  edition  of  the  Edda,  ninth  edi- 
tion, p.  319  ;  also  John  Fiske,  Myths  and  Myth-Makers,  pp.  8,  9.  On  the  univer- 
sality of  such  legends  and  myths,  see  Ritter's  Erdkunde,  vol.  xiv,  pp.  1098-1122.  For 
Irish  examples,  see  Manz,  Real-Encyclopddie,  article  Stein  ;  and  for  multitudes  of 
examples  in  Brittany,  see  Sebillot,  Traditions  de  la  Haute-Bretagne.  For  the  en- 
chanted columns  at  Saloniki,  see  the  latest  edition  of  Murray's  Handbook  of  Turkey, 
vol.  ii,  p.  711.  For  the  legend  of  the  angel  changed  into  stone  for  neglecting  to 
guard  Adam,  see  Weil,  university  librarian  at  Heidelberg,  Biblische  Legende  der 
Musehndnner,  Frankfort-am-Main,  1845,  pp.  37,  84.  For  similar  transformation 
legends  in  Australia  and  among  the  American  Indians,  see  Andrew  Lang,  Mythology, 
French  translation,  pp.  83,  102  ;  also  his  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion,  vol.  i,  pp.  150 
et  seq.,  citing  numerous  examples  from  J.  G.  Midler,  Urreligionen,  and  Dorman's 
Primitive  Superstitions  ;  also  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  for  iS8o-'8i  ;  and 
for  an  African  example,  see  account  of  the  rock  at  Balon  which  was  once  a  woman, 
in  Berenger-Fe>aud,  Contes populaires  de  la  SZ/i/gambie,  chap.  viii.  For  the  Weimar 
legend,  see  Lewes,  Life  of  Goethe,  book  iv.     For  the  myths  which  arose  about  the 


GROWTH   OF    EXPLANATORY   TRANSFORMATION    MYTHS.  2IO 

To  the  same  stage  of  thought  belongs  the  conception  of 
human  beings  changed  into  trees.  But,  in  the  historic  evo- 
lution of  religion  and  morality,  while  changes  into  stone  or 
rock  were  considered  as  punishments,  or  evidences  of  divine 
wrath,  those  into  trees  and  shrubs  were  frequently  looked 
upon  as  rewards,  or  evidences  of  divine  favour. 

A  very  beautiful  and  touching  form  of  this  conception  is 
seen  in  such  myths  as  the  change  of  Philemon  into  the  oak, 
and  of  Baucis  into  the  linden;  of  Myrrha  into  the  myrtle  ;  of 
Melos  into  the  apple  tree  ;  of  Attis  into  the  pine;  of  Adonis 
into  the  rose  tree  ;  and  in  the  springing  of  the  vine  and  grape 
from  the  blood  of  the  Titans,  the  violet  from  the  blood  of 
Attis,  and  the  hyacinth  from  the  blood  of  Hyacinthus. 

Thus  it  was,  during  the  long  ages  when  mankind  saw 
everywhere  miracle  and  nowhere  law,  that,  in  the  evolution 
of  religion  and  morality,  striking  features  in  physical  ge- 
ography became  connected  with  the  idea  of  divine  retri- 
bution.* 

But,  in  the  natural  course  of  intellectual  growth,  think- 
ing men  began  to  doubt  the  historical  accuracy  of  these 
myths  and  legends — or,  at  least,  to  doubt  all  save  those  of 
the  theology  in  which  they  happened  to  be  born  ;  and  the 
next  step  was  taken  when  they  began  to  make  comparisons 
between  the  myths  and  legends  of  different  neighbourhoods 
and  countries :  so  came  into  being  the  science  of  compara- 
tive mythology — a  science  sure  to  be  of  vast  value,  because, 
despite  many  stumblings  and  vagaries,  it  shows  ever  more 
and  more  how  our  religion  and  morality  have  been  gradu- 
ally evolved,  and  gives  a  firm  basis  to  a  faith  that  higher 
planes  may  yet  be  reached. 

swindling  "  Cardiff  Giant  "  in  the  State  of  New  York,  see  especially  an  article  by 
G.  A.  Stockwell,  M.  D.,  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  June,  1S78  ;  see  also 
W.  A.  McKinney  in  The  New-Englandet  for  October,  1875  ;  and  for  the  "  Phoeni- 
cian inscription,"  given  at  length  with  a  translation,  see  the  Rev.  Alexander  Mc- 
Whorter,  in  The  Galaxy  for  July,  1872.  The  present  writer  visited  the  "giant  " 
shortly  after  it  was  "  discovered,"  carefully  observed  it,  and  the  myths  to  which  it 
gave  rise,  has  in  his  possession  a  mass  of  curious  documents  regarding  this  fraud, 
and  hopes  ere  long  to  prepare  a  supplement  to  Dr.  Stockwell's  valuable  paper. 

*  For  the  view  taken  in  Greece  and  Rome  of  transformations  into  trees  and 
shrubs,  see  Botticher,  Baumcultus  der  Hellenen,  book  i,  chap,  xix  ;  also  Ovid,  Meta- 
morphoses, passim  ;  also  foregoing  notes. 


220  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

Such  a  science  makes  the  sacred  books  of  the  world 
more  and  more  precious,  in  that  it  shows  how  they  have 
been  the  necessary  envelopes  of  our  highest  spiritual  suste- 
nance ;  how  even  myths  and  legends  apparently  the  most 
puerile  have  been  the  natural  husks  and  rinds  and  shells  of 
our  best  ideas;  and  how  the  atmosphere  is  created  in  which 
these  husks  and  rinds  and  shells  in  due  time  wither,  shrivel, 
and  fall  away,  so  that  the  fruit  itself  may  be  gathered  to  sus- 
tain a  nobler  religion  and  a  purer  morality. 

The  coming  in  of  Christianity  contributed  elements  of 
inestimable  value  in  this  evolution,  and,  at  the  centre  of  all, 
the  thoughts,  words,  and  life  of  the  Master.  But  when,  in 
the  darkness  that  followed  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, there  was  developed  a  theology  and  a  vast  ecclesiastical 
power  to  enforce  it,  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  this 
evolution  of  religion  and  morality  were  removed  from  the 
domain  of  science. 

So  it  came  that  for  over  eighteen  hundred  years  it  has 
been  thought  natural  and  right  to  study  and  compare  the 
myths  and  legends  arising  east  and  west  and  south  and 
north  of  Palestine  with  each  other,  but  never  with  those  of 
Palestine  itself ;  so  it  came  that  one  of  the  regions  most  fruit- 
ful in  materials  for  reverent  thought  and  healthful  compari- 
son was  held  exempt  from  the  unbiased  search  for  truth  ;  so 
it  came  that,  in  the  name  of  truth,  truth  was  crippled  for 
ages.  While  observation,  and  thought  upon  observation, 
and  the  organized  knowledge  or  science  which  results  from 
these,  progressed  as  regarded  the  myths  and  legends  of 
other  countries,  and  an  atmosphere  was  thus  produced  giv- 
ing purer  conceptions  of  the  world  and  its  government, 
myths  of  that  little  geographical  region  at  the  eastern  end  of 
the  Mediterranean  retained  possession  of  the  civilized  world 
in  their  original  crude  form,  and  have  at  times  done  much 
to  thwart  the  noblest  efforts  of  religion,  morality,  and  civili- 
zation. 


MEDIAEVAL   GROWTH   OF   THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS.     221 

II.    MEDI.EVAL   GROWTH   OF    THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS. 

The  history  of  myths,  of  their  growth  under  the  earlier 
phases  of  human  thought  and  of  their  decline  under  modern 
thinking,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  suggestive  of 
human  studies ;  but,  since  to  treat  it  as  a  whole  would  re- 
quire volumes,  I  shall  select  only  one  small  group,  and  out 
of  this  mainly  a  single  myth— one  about  which  there  can  no 
longer  be  any  dispute— the  group  of  myths  and  legends 
which  grew  upon  the  shore  of  the  Dead  Sea,  and  especially 
that  one  which  grew  up  to  account  for  the  successive  salt 
columns  washed  out  by  the  rains  at  its  southwestern  ex- 
tremity. 

The  Dead  Sea  is  about  fifty  miles  in  length  and  ten  miles 
in  width  ;  it  lies  in  a  very  deep  fissure  extending  north  and 
south,  and  its  surface  is  about  thirteen  hundred  feet  below 
that  of  the  Mediterranean.  It  has,  therefore,  no  outlet,  and 
is  the  receptacle  for  the  waters  of  the  whole  system  to  which 
it  belongs,  including  those  collected  by  the  Sea  of  Galilee 
and  brought  down  thence  by  the  river  Jordan. 

It  certainly— or  at  least  the  larger  part  of  it— ranks  geo- 
logically among  the  oldest  lakes  on  earth.  In  a  broad  sense 
the  region  is  volcanic  :  on  its  shore  are  evidences  of  volcanic 
action,  which  must  from  the  earliest  period  have  aroused 
wonder  and  fear,  and  stimulated  the  myth-making  tendency 
to  account  for  them.  On  the  eastern  side  are  impressive 
mountain  masses  which  have  been  thrown  up  from  old  vol- 
canic vents  ;  mineral  and  hot  springs  abound,  some  of  them 
spreading  sulphurous  odours ;  earthquakes  have  been  fre- 
quent, and  from  time  to  time  these  have  cast  up  masses  of 
bitumen  ;  concretions  of  sulphur  and  large  formations  of  salt 
constantly  appear. 

The  water  which  comes  from  the  springs  or  oozes 
through  the  salt  layers  upon  its  shores  constantly  brings 
in  various  salts  in  solution,  and,  being  rapidly  evaporated 
under  the  hot  sun  and  dry  wind,  there  has  been  left,  in  the 
bed  of  the  lake,  a  strong  brine  heavily  charged  with  the 
usual  chlorides  and  bromides— a  sort  of  bitter  "  mother 
liquor."  This  fluid  has  become  so  dense  as  to  have  a  re- 
markable power  of  supporting  the  human  body  ;  it  is  of  an 


222    DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

acrid  and  nauseating-  bitterness ;  and  by  ordinary  eyes  no 
evidence  of  life  is  seen  in  it. 

Thus  it  was  that  in  the  lake  itself,  and  in  its  surrounding 
shores,  there  was  enough  to  make  the  generation  of  explan- 
atory myths  on  a  large  scale  inevitable. 

The  main  northern  part  of  the  lake  is  very  deep,  the 
plummet  having  shown  an  abyss  of  thirteen  hundred  feet; 
but  the  southern  end  is  shallow  and  in  places  marshy. 

The  system  of  which  it  forms  a  part  shows  a  likeness  to 
that  in  South  America  of  which  the  mountain  lake  Titicaca 
is  the  main  feature ;  as  a  receptacle  for  surplus  waters,  only 
rendering  them  by  evaporation,  it  resembles  the  Caspian 
and  many  other  seas ;  as  a  sort  of  evaporating  dish  for  the 
leachings  of  salt  rock,  and  consequently  holding  a  body 
of  water  unfit  to  support  the  higher  forms  of  animal  life, 
it  resembles,  among  others,  the  Median  lake  of  Urumiah  ; 
as  a  deposit  of  bitumen,  it  resembles  the  pitch  lakes  of 
Trinidad.* 


*  For  modern  views  of  the  Dead  Sea,  see  the  Rev.  Edward  Robinson,  D  D., 
Biblical  Researches,  various  editions  ;  Lynch's  Exploring  Expedition  ;  De  Saulcy, 

Voyage  autour  de  la  Mer  Morte  ;  Stanley's  Palestine  and  Syria  ;  Schaff's  Through 
Bible  Lands  ;  and  other  travellers  hereafter  quoted.  For  good  photogravures,  show- 
ing the  character  of  the  whole  region,  see  the  atlas  forming  part  of  De  Luynes's 
monumental  Voyage  d' Exploration.     For  geographical  summaries,  see  Reclus,  La 

Terre,  Paris,  1870,  pp.  832-843  ;  Ritter,  Erdkunde,  volumes  devoted  to  Palestine 
and  especially  as  supplemented  in  Gage's  translation  with  additions ;  Reclus,  Nou- 
velle  Gdographie  Universelle,  vol.  ix,  p.  736,  where  a  small  map  is  given  presenting  the 
difference  in  depth  between  the  two  ends  of  the  lake,  of  which  so  much  was  made 
theologically  before  Lartet.  For  still  better  maps,  see  De  Saulcy,  and  especially 
De  Luynes,  Voyage  d Exploration  (atlas).  For  very  interesting  panoramic  views, 
see  last  edition  of  Canon  Tristram's  Land  of  Israel,  p.  635.  For  the  geology,  see 
Lartet,  in  his  reports  to  the  French  Geographical  Society,  and  especially  in  vol.  iii 
of  De  Luynes's  work,  where  there  is  an  admirable  geological  map  with  sections, 
etc. ;  also  Ritter  ;  also  Sir  J.  W.  Dawson's  Egypt  and  Syria,  published  by  the  Re- 
ligious Tract  Society;  also  Rev.  Cunningham  Geikie,  D.  D.,  Geology  of Palestin:  ; 
and  for  pictures  showing  salt  formation,  Tristram,  as  above.  For  the  meteorology, 
see  Vignes,  report  to  De  Luynes,  pp.  65  et  sea.  For  chemistry  of  the  Dead  Sea,  see 
as  above,  and  Terreil's  report,  given  in  Gage's  Ritter,  vol.  iii,  appendix  2,  and 
tables  in  De  Luynes's  third  volume.  For  zoology  of  the  Dead  Sea,  as  to  entire 
absence  of  life  in  it,  see  all  earlier  travellers  ;  as  to  presence  of  lower  forms  of  life, 
see  Ehrenberg's  microscopic  examinations  in  Gage's  Ritter.  See  also  reports  in 
third  volume  of  De  Luynes.  For  botany  of  the  Dead  Sea,  and  especially  regard- 
ing "apples  of  Sodom,"  see  Dr.  Lortet's  La  Syrie,  p.  412;  also  Reclus,  Nouvelle 
Geographic,  vol.  ix,  p.  737 ;  also  for  photographic  representations  of  them,  see  port- 


MEDLEVAL   GROWTH   OF   THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS. 


223 


In  all  this  there  is  nothing  presenting  any  special  difficulty 
to  the  modern  geologist  or  geographer ;  but  with  the  early 
dweller  in  Palestine  the  case  was  very  different.  The  rocky, 
barren  desolation  of  the  Dead  Sea  region  impressed  him 
deeply  ;  he  naturally  reasoned  upon  it ;  and  this  impression 
and  reasoning  we  find  stamped  into  the  pages  of  his  sacred 
literature,  rendering  them  all  the  more  precious  as  a  revela- 
tion of  the  earlier  thought  of  mankind.  The  long  circum- 
stantial account  given  in  Genesis,  its  application  in  Deuteron- 
omy, its  use  by  Amos,  by  Isaiah,  by  Jeremiah,  by  Zephaniah, 
and  by  Ezekiel,  the  references  to  it  in  the  writings  attributed 
to  St.  Paul,  St.  Peter,  and  St.  Jude,  in  the  Apocalypse,  and, 
above  all,  in  more  than  one  utterance  of  the  Master  himself — 
all  show  how  deeply  these  geographical  features  impressed 
the  Jewish  mind. 

At  a  very  early  period,  myths  and  legends,  many  and  cir- 
cumstantial, grew  up  to  explain  features  then  so  incompre- 
hensible. 

As  the  myth  and  legend  grew  up  among  the  Greeks  of  a 
refusal  of  hospitality  to  Zeus  and  Hermes  by  the  village  in 
Phrygia,  and  the  consequent  sinking  of  that  beautiful  region 
with  its  inhabitants  beneath  a  lake  and  morass,  so  there  came 
belief  in  a  similar  offence  by  the  people  of  the  beautiful  val- 
ley of  Siddim,  and  the  consequent  sinking  of  that  valley  with 
its  inhabitants  beneath  the  waters  of  the  Dead  Sea.     Very 


folio  forming  part  of  De  Luynes's  work,  plate  27.  For  Strabo's  very  perfect  de- 
scription, see  his  Geog.,  lib.  xvi,  cap.  ii ;  also  Fallmerayer,  Werke,  pp.  177,  178.  For 
names  and  positions  of  a  large  number  of  salt  lakes  in  various  parts  of  the  world 
more  or  less  resembling  the  Dead  Sea,  see  De  Luynes,  vol.  iii,  pp.  242  et  seq.  For 
Trinidad  "pitch  lakes,"  found  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  in  1595,  see  Langegg,  El 
Dorado,  part  i,  p.  103,  and  part  ii,  p.  101  ;  also  Reclus,  Ritter,  et  al.  For  the  gen- 
eral subject,  see  Schenkel,  Bibel-Lexikon,  s.  v.  Todies  Meer,  an  excellent  summary. 
The  description  of  the  Dead  Sea  in  Lenormant's  great  history  is  utterly  unworthy 
of  him,  and  must  have  been  thrown  together  from  old  notes  after  his  death.  It  is 
amazing  to  see  in  such  a  work  the  old  superstition  that  birds  attempting  to  fly  over 
the  sea  are  suffocated.  See  Lenormant,  Histoire  ancienne  de  /'Orient,  edition  of 
1888,  vol.  vi,  p.  112.  For  the  absorption  and  adoption  of  foreign  myths  and  legends 
by  the  Jews,  see  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  p.  390.  For 
the  views  of  Greeks  and  Romans,  see  especially  Tacitus,  Histories,  book  v,  Pliny, 
and  Strabo,  in  whose  remarks  are  the  germs  of  many  of  the  mediaeval  myths.  For 
very  curious  examples  of  these,  see  Baierus,  De  Excidio  Sodotnce,  Halle,  1690, 
passim. 


224   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

similar  to  the  accounts  of  the  saving  of  Philemon  and  Baucis 
are  those  of  the  saving-  of  Lot  and  his  family. 

But  the  myth-making  and  miracle-mongering  by  no  means 
ceased  in  ancient  times ;  they  continued  to  grow  through 
the  mediaeval  and  modern  period  until  they  have  quietly 
withered  away  in  the  light  of  modern  scientific  investiga- 
tion, leaving  to  us  the  religious  and  moral  truths  they  in- 
close. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  trace  this  whole  group  of 
myths:  their  origin  in  times  prehistoric,  their  development 
in  Greece  and  Rome,  their  culmination  during  the  ages  of 
faith,  and  their  disappearance  in  the  age  of  science.  It 
would  be  especially  instructive  to  note  the  conscientious 
efforts  to  prolong  their  life  by  making  futile  compromises 
between  science  and  theology  regarding  them ;  but  I  shall 
mention  this  main  group  only  incidentally,  confining  myself 
almost  entirely  to  the  one  above  named — the  most  remark- 
able of  all — the  myth  which  grew  about  the  salt  pillars  of 
Usdum. 

I  select  this  mainly  because  it  involves  only  elementary 
principles,  requires  no  abstruse  reasoning,  and  because  all 
controversy  regarding  it  is  ended.  There  is  certainly  now 
no  theologian  with  a  reputation  to  lose  who  will  venture  to 
revive  the  idea  regarding  it  which  was  sanctioned  for  hun- 
dreds, nay,  thousands,  of  years  by  theology,  was  based  on 
Scripture,  and  was  held  by  the  universal  Church  until  our 
own  century. 

The  main  feature  of  the  salt  region  of  Usdum  is  a  low 
range  of  hills  near  the  southwest  corner  of  the  Dead  Sea,  ex- 
tending in  a  southeasterly  direction  for  about  five  miles,  and 
made  up  mainly  of  salt  rock.  This  rock  is  soft  and  friable, 
and,  under  the  influence  of  the  heavy  winter  rains,  it  has 
been,  without  doubt,  from  a  period  long  before  human  his- 
tory, as  it  is  now,  cut  ever  into  new  shapes,  and  especially 
into  pillars  or  columns,  which  sometimes  bear  a  resemblance 
to  the  human  form. 

An  eminent  clergyman  who  visited  this  spot  recently 
speaks  of  the  appearance  of  this  salt  range  as  follows : 

"  Fretted  by  fitful  showers  and  storms,  its  ridge  is  ex- 
ceedingly uneven,  its  sides  carved  out  and  constantly  chang- 


MEDIEVAL   GROWTH   OF    THE    DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS.     225 

in°" ;  .  .  •  and  each  traveller  might  have  a  new  pillar  of  salt 
to  wonder  over  at  intervals  of  a  few  years."  * 

Few  things  could  be  more  certain  than  that,  in  the  indo- 
lent dream-life  of  the  East,  myths  and  legends  would  grow 
up  to  account  for  this  as  for  other  strange  appearances  in  all 
that  region.  The  question  which  a  religious  Oriental  put 
to  himself  in  ancient  times  at  Usdum  was  substantially  that 
which  his  descendant  to-day  puts  to  himself  at  Kosseir : 
"  Why  is  this  region  thus  blasted  ?  "  "  Whence  these  pillars 
of  salt?"  or  "  Whence  these  blocks  of  granite?"  "What 
aroused  the  vengeance  of  Jehovah  or  of  Allah  to  work  these 
miracles  of  desolation  ?  " 

And,  just  as  Maxime  Du  Camp  recorded  the  answer  of 
the  modern  Shemite  at  Kosseir,  so  the  compilers  of  the  Jew- 
ish sacred  books  recorded  the  answer  of  the  ancient  Shemite 
at  the  Dead  Sea ;  just  as  Allah  at  Kosseir  blasted  the  land 
and  transformed  the  melons  into  boulders  which  are  seen  to 
this  day,  so  Jehovah  at  Usdum  blasted  the  land  and  trans- 
formed Lot's  wife  into  a  pillar  of  salt,  which  is  seen  to  this 
day. 

No  more  difficulty  was  encountered  in  the  formation  of 
the  Lot  legend,  to  account  for  that  rock  resembling  the  hu- 
man form,  than  in  the  formation  of  the  Niobe  legend,  which 
accounted  for  a  supposed  resemblance  in  the  rock  at  Sipy- 
los:  it  grew  up  just  as  we  have  seen  thousands  of  similar 
myths  and  legends  grow  up  about  striking  natural  appear- 
ances in  every  early  home  of  the  human  race.  Being  thus 
consonant  with  the  universal  view  regarding  the  relation  of 

*  As  to  the  substance  of  the  "  pillars  "  or  "  statues  "  or  "  needles  "  of  salt  at  Us- 
dum, many  travellers  speak  of  it  as  "marl  and  salt."  Irby  and  Mangles,  in  their 
Travels  in  Egypt,  Nubia,  Syria,  and  the  Holy  Land,  chap,  vii,  call  it  "  salt  and 
hardened  sand."  The  citation  as  to  frequent  carving  out  of  new  "pillars"  is  from 
the  Travels  in  Palestine  of  the  Rev.  H.  F.  Osborn,  D.  D.  ;  see  also  Palmer,  Desert 
of  the  Exodus,  vol.  ii,  pp.  478,  479.  For  engravings  of  the  salt  pillar  at  different 
times,  compare  that  given  by  Lynch  in  1848,  when  it  appeared  as  a  column  forty 
feet  high,  with  that  given  by  Palmer  as  the  frontispiece  to  his  Desert  of  the  Exodus, 
Cambridge,  England,  1871,  when  it  was  small  and  "does  really  bear  a  curious  re- 
semblance to  an  Arab  woman  with  a  child  upon  her  shoulders  "  ;  and  this  again 
with  the  picture  of  the  salt  formation  at  Usdum  given  by  Canon  Tristram,  at  whose 
visit  there  was  neither  "pillar"  nor  "  statue."  See  The  Land  of  Israel,  by  H.  B. 
Tristram,  D.  D.,  F.  R.  S.,  London,  1S82,  p.  324.  For  similar  pillars  of  salt  washed 
out  from  the  marl  in  Catalonia,  see  Lyell. 
43 


226   DEAD  SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

physical  geography  to  the  divine  government,  it  became  a 
treasure  of  the  Jewish  nation  and  of  the  Christian  Church — 
a  treasure  not  only  to  be  guarded  against  all  hostile  intru- 
sion, but  to  be  increased,  as  we  shall  see,  by  the  myth-mak- 
ing powers  of  Jews,  Christians,  and  Mohammedans  for  thou- 
sands of  years. 

The  spot  where  the  myth  originated  was  carefully  kept 
in  mind  ;  indeed,  it  could  not  escape,  for  in  that  place  alone 
were  constantly  seen  the  phenomena  which  gave  rise  to  it. 
We  have  a  steady  chain  of  testimony  through  the  ages,  all 
pointing  to  the  salt  pillar  as  the  irrefragable  evidence  of 
divine  judgment.  That  great  theological  test  of  truth,  the 
dictum  of  St.  Vincent  of  Lerins,  would  certainly  prove  that 
the  pillar  was  Lot's  wife,  for  it  was  believed  so  to  be  by  Jews, 
Christians,  and  Mohammedans  from  the  earliest  period  down 
to  a  time  almost  within  present  memory — "always,  every- 
where, and  by  all."  It  would  stand  perfectly  the  ancient 
test  insisted  upon  by  Cardinal  Newman,  " Securus  judicat 
orbis  tcrrarum." 

For,  ever  since  the  earliest  days  of  Christianity,  the  iden- 
tity of  the  salt  pillar  with  Lot's  wife  has  been  universally 
held  and  supported  by  passages  in  Genesis,  in  St.  Luke's 
Gospel,  and  in  the  Second  Epistle  of  St.  Peter— coupled  with 
a  passage  in  the  book  of  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  which  to 
this  day,  by  a  majority  in  the  Christian  Church,  is  believed 
to  be  inspired,  and  from  which  are  specially  cited  the  words, 
"A  standing  pillar  of  salt  is  a  monument  of  an  unbelieving 
soul."  * 

Never  was  chain  of  belief  more  continuous.  In  the  first 
century  of  the  Christian  era  Josephus  refers  to  the  miracle, 
and  declares  regarding  the  statue,  "  I  have  seen  it,  and  it  re- 
mains at  this  day  "  ;  and  Clement,  Bishop  of  Rome,  one  of 
the  most  revered  fathers  of  the  Church,  noted  for  the  mod- 
eration of  his  statements,  expresses  a  similar  certainty,  declar- 
ing the  miraculous  statue  to  be  still  standing. 


*  For  the  usual  biblical  citations,  see  Genesis  xix,  26  ;  St.  Luke  xvii,  32  ;  II 
Peter  ii,  6.  For  the  citation  from  Wisdom,  see  chap,  x,  v.  7.  For  the  account 
of  the  transformation  of  Lot's  wife  put  into  its  proper  relations  with  the  Jehovistic 
and  Elohistic  documents,  see  Lenormant's  La  Genhe,  Paris,  1883,  pp.  53,  199,  and 
317,  3i8. 


MEDIAEVAL   GROWTH   OF   THE   DEAD   SEA  LEGENDS.     227 

la  the  second  century  that  great  father  of  the  Church, 
bishop  and  martyr,  Irenasus,  not  only  vouched  for  it,  but 
gave  his  approval  to  the  belief  that  the  soul  of  Lot's  wife 
still  lingered  in  the  statue,  giving  it  a  sort  of  organic  life: 
thus  virtually  began  in  the  Church  that  amazing  devel- 
opment of  the  legend  which  we  shall  see  taking  various 
forms  through  the  Middle  Ages — the  story  that  the  salt 
statue  exercised  certain  physical  functions  which  in  these 
more  delicate  days  can  not  be  alluded  to  save  under  cover 
of  a  dead  language. 

This  addition  to  the  legend,  which  in  these  signs  of  life, 
as  in  other  things,  is  developed  almost  exactly  on  the  same 
lines  with  the  legend  of  the  Niobe  statue  in  the  rock  of 
Mount  Sipylos  and  with  the  legends  of  human  beings  trans- 
formed into  boulders  in  various  mythologies,  was  for  cen- 
turies regarded  as  an  additional  confirmation  of  revealed 
truth. 

In  the  third  century  the  myth  burst  into  still  richer  bloom 
in  a  poem  long  ascribed  to  Tertullian.  In  this  poem  more 
miraculous  characteristics  of  the  statue  are  revealed.  It 
could  not  be  washed  away  by  rains ;  it  could  not  be  over- 
thrown by  winds  ;  any  wound  made  upon  it  was  miraculously 
healed  ;  and  the  earlier  statements  as  to  its  physical  functions 
were  amplified  in  sonorous  Latin  verse. 

With  this  appeared  a  new  legend  regarding  the  Dead 
Sea  ;  it  became  universally  believed,  and  we  find  it  repeated 
throughout  the  whole  mediaeval  period,  that  the  bitumen 
could  only  be  dissolved  by  such  fluids  as  in  the  processes  of 
animated  nature  came  from  the  statue. 

The  legend  thus  amplified  we  shall  find  dwelt  upon  by 
pious  travellers  and  monkish  chroniclers  for  hundreds  of 
years :  so  it  came  to  be  more  and  more  treasured  by  the  uni- 
versal Church,  and  held  more  and  more  firmly — "  always, 
everywhere,  and  by  all.'1 

In  the  two  following  centuries  we  have  an  overwhelming 
mass  of  additional  authority  for  the  belief  that  the  very  statue 
of  salt  into  which  Lot's  wife  was  transformed  was  still  exist- 
ing. In  the  fourth,  the  continuance  of  the  statue  was  vouched 
for  by  St.  Silvia,  who  visited  the  place  :  though  she  could 
not  see  it,  she  was  told  by  the  Bishop  of  Segor  that  it  had 


223   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

been  there  some  time  before,  and  she  concluded  that  it  had 
been  temporarily  covered  by  the  sea.  In  both  the  fourth 
and  fifth  centuries  such  great  doctors  in  the  Church  as  St. 
Jerome,  St.  John  Chrysostom,  and  St.  Cyril  of  Jerusalem 
agreed  in  this  belief  and  statement ;  hence  it  was,  doubtless, 
that  the  Hebrew  word  which  is  translated  in  the  authorized 
English  version  "  pillar,"  was  translated  in  the  Vulgate,  which 
the  majority  of  Christians  believe  virtually  inspired,  by  the 
word  "  statue "  ;  we  shall  find  this  fact  insisted  upon  by 
theologians  arguing  in  behalf  of  the  statue,  as  a  result  and 
monument  of  the  miracle,  for  over  fourteen  hundred  years 
afterward.* 

About  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  Antoninus  Martyr 
visited  the  Dead  Sea  region  and  described  it,  but  curiously 
reversed  a  simple  truth  in  these  words :  "  Nor  do  sticks  or 
straws  float  there,  nor  can  a  man  swim,  but  whatever  is  cast 
into  it  sinks  to  the  bottom."  As  to  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife, 
he  threw  doubt  upon  its  miraculous  renewal,  but  testified 
that  it  was  still  standing. 

In  the  seventh  century  the  Targum  of  Jerusalem  not  only 
testified  that  the  salt  pillar  at  Usdum  was  once  Lot's  wife, 
but  declared  that  she  must  retain  that  form  until  the  general 
resurrection.  In  the  seventh  century,  too,  Bishop  Arculf 
travelled  to  the  Dead  Sea,  and  his  work  was  added  to  the 
treasures  of  the  Church.  He  greatly  develops  the  legend, 
and  especially  that  part  of  it  given  by  Josephus.  The  bitu- 
men that  floats  upon  the  sea  "  resembles  gold  and  the  form 
of  a  bull  or  camel  "  ;  "  birds  can  not  live  near  it  "  ;  and  "  the 
very  beautiful  apples "  which  grow  there,  when  plucked, 
"  burn  and  are  reduced  to  ashes,  and  smoke  as  if  they  were 
still  burning." 

In  the  eighth  centurv  the  Venerable  Bede  takes  these 


*  See  Josephus,  Antiquities,  book  i,  chap,  xi  ;  Clement,  Epist.  I;  Cyril  Hieros, 
Cateck.,  xix  ;  Chrysostom,  Horn.  XVIII,  XLIV,  hi  Genes.  ;  Irenaeus,  lib.  iv,  c.  xxxi, 
of  his  Heresies,  edition  Oxon.,  1702.  For  St.  Silvia,  see  S.  Silvice  Aquitance  Pere- 
grinatio  ad loca  Sancta,  Romse,  1887,  p.  55  ;  also  edition  of  1S85,  p.  25.  For  recent 
translation,  see  Pilgrimage  of  St.  Silvia,  p.  28,  in  publications  of  Palestine  Text  So- 
ciety for  1891.  For  legends  of  signs  of  continued  life  in  boulders  and  stones  into 
which  human  beings  have  been  transformed  for  sin,  see  Karl  Bartsch,  Sagen,  etc., 
vol.  ii,  pp.  420  et  seq. 


MEDIAEVAL   GROWTH   OF    THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS.     229 

statements  of  Arculf  and  his  predecessors,  binds  them  to- 
gether in  his  work  on  The  Holy  Places,  and  gives  the  whole 
mass  of  myths  and  legends  an  enormous  impulse.* 

In  the  tenth  century  new  force  is  given  to  it  by  the  pious 
Moslem  Mukadassi.  Speaking  of  the  town  of  Segor,  near 
the  salt  reo-ion,  he  says  that  the  proper  translation  of  its 
name  is  "  Hell "  ;  and  of  the  lake  he  says,  "  Its  waters  are 
hot,  even  as  though  the  place  stood  over  hell-fire." 

In  the  crusading  period,  immediately  following,  all  the 
legends  burst  forth  more  brilliantly  than  ever. 

The  first  of  these  new  travellers  who  makes  careful  state- 
ments is  Fulk  of  Chartres,  who  in  1100  accompanied  King 
Baldwin  to  the  Dead  Sea  and  saw  many  wonders;  but, 
though  he  visited  the  salt  region  at  Usdum,  he  makes  no 
mention  of  the  salt  pillar:  evidently  he  had  fallen  on  evil 
times  ;  the  older  statues  had  probably  been  washed  away, 
and  no  new  one  had  happened  to  be  washed  out  of  the  rocks 
just  at  that  period. 

But  his  misfortune  was  more  than  made  up  by  the  trium- 
phant experience  of  a  far  more  famous  traveller,  half  a  cen- 
tury later — Rabbi  Benjamin  of  Tudela. 

Rabbi  Benjamin  finds  new  evidences  of  miracle  in  the 
Dead  Sea,  and  develops  to  a  still  higher  point  the  legend  of 
the  salt  statue  of  Lot's  wife,  enriching  the  world  with  the 
statement  that  it  was  steadily  and  miraculously  renewed ; 
that,  though  the  cattle  of  the  region  licked  its  surface,  it 
never  grew  smaller.  Again  a  thrill  of  joy  went  through  the 
monasteries  and  pulpits  of  Christendom  at  this  increasing 
"  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Scripture." 

Toward  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  there  appeared 
in  Palestine  a  traveller  superior  to  most  before  or  since — 
Count  Burchard,  monk  of  Mount  Sion.  He  had  the  advan- 
tage of  knowing  something  of  Arabic,  and  his  writings  show 

*  For  Antoninus  Martyr,  see  Tobler's  edition  of  his  work  in  the  Itinera,  vol.  i, 
p.  100,  Geneva,  1877.  For  the  Targum  of  Jerusalem,  see  citation  in  Quaresmius, 
Terra  Sancta  Elucidatio,  Peregrinatio  vi,  cap.  xiv  ;  new  Venice  edition.  For  Ar- 
culf, see  Tobler.  For  Bede,  see  his  De  Locis  Sanctis  in  Tobler's  Itinera,  vol.  i,  p. 
228.  For  an  admirable  statement  of  the  mediaeval  theological  view  of  scientific 
research,  see  Eicken,  Geschichte  der  mittclalterlichen  Weltanschauung,  Stuttgart, 
1S87,  chap.  vi. 


230   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

him  to  have  been  observant  and  thoughtful.  No  statue  of 
Lot's  wife  appears  to  have  been  washed  clean  of  the  salt 
rock  at  his  visit,  but  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  the  Dead 
Sea  is  "  the  mouth  of  hell,"  and  that  the  vapour  rising  from 
it  is  the  smoke  from  Satan's  furnaces. 

These  ideas  seem  to  have  become  part  of  the  common 
stock,  for  Ernoul,  who  travelled  to  the  Dead  Sea  during 
the  same  century,  always  speaks  of  it  as  the  "  Sea  of 
Devils." 

Near  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century  appeared 
the  book  of  far  wider  influence  which  bears  the  name  of  Sir 
John  Mandeville,  and  in  the  various  editions  of  it  myths  and 
legends  of  the  Dead  Sea  and  of  the  pillar  of  salt  burst  forth 
into  wonderful  luxuriance. 

This  book  tells  us  that  masses  of  fiery  matter  are  every 
day  thrown  up  from  the  water  "as  large  as  a  horse";  that, 
though  it  contains  no  living  thing,  it  has  been  shown  that 
men  thrown  into  it  can  not  die ;  and,  finally,  as  if  to  prove 
the  worthlessness  of  devout  testimony  to  the  miraculous,  he 
says  :  "  And  whoever  throws  a  piece  of  iron  therein,  it  floats ; 
and  whoever  throws  a  feather  therein,  it  sinks  to  the  bottom  ; 
and,  because  that  is  contrary  to  nature,  I  was  not  willing  to 
believe  it  until  I  saw  it." 

The  book,  of  course,  mentions  Lot's  wife,  and  says  that 
the  pillar  of  salt  "  stands  there  to-day,"  and  "  has  a  right 
salty  taste." 

Injustice  has  perhaps  been  done  to  the  compilers  of  this 
famous  work  in  holding  them  liars  of  the  first  magnitude. 
They  simply  abhorred  scepticism,  and  thought  it  meritorious 
to  believe  all  pious  legends.  The  ideal  Mandeville  was  a 
man  of  overmastering  faith,  and  resembled  Tertullian  in 
believing  some  things  "  because  they  are  impossible  " ;  he 
was  doubtless  entirely  conscientious ;  the  solemn  ending  of 
the  book  shows  that  he  listened,  observed,  and  wrote  under 
the  deepest  conviction,  and  those  who  re-edited  his  book 
were  probably  just  as  honest  in  adding  the  later  stories  of 
pious  travellers. 

The  Travels  of  Sir  John  Mandeville,  thus  appealing  to  the 
popular  heart,  were  most  widely  read  in  the  monasteries  and 
repeated  among  the  people.     Innumerable  copies  were  made 


MEDIAEVAL   GROWTH   OF   THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS.     23 1 

in  manuscript,  and  finally  in  print,  and  so  the  old  myths  re- 
ceived a  new  life.* 

In  the  fifteenth  century  wonders  increased.  In  141 8  we 
have  the  Lord  of  Caumont,  who  makes  a  pilgrimage  and 
gives  us  a  statement  which  is  the  result  of  the  theological 
reasoning  of  centuries,  and  especially  interesting  as  a  typical 
example  of  the  theological  method  in  contrast  with  the  sci- 
entific. He  could  not  understand  how  the  blessed  waters  of 
the  Jordan  could  be  allowed  to  mingle  with  the  accursed 
waters  of  the  Dead  Sea.  In  spite,  then,  of  the  eye  of  sense, 
he  beheld  the  water  with  the  eye  of  faith,  and  calmly  an- 
nounced  that  the  Jordan  water  passes  through  the  sea,  but 
that  the  two  masses  of  water  are  not  mingled.  As  to  the 
salt  statue  of  Lot's  wife,  he  declares  it  to  be  still  existing ; 
and,  copying  a  table  of  indulgences  granted  by  the  Church 
to  pious  pilgrims,  he  puts  down  the  visit  to  the  salt  statue  as 
giving  an  indulgence  of  seven  years. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  century  we  have  another  traveller 
yet  more  influential:  Bernard  of  Breydenbach,  Dean  of  Mainz. 
His  book  of  travels  was  published  in  i486,  at  the  famous 
press  of  Schoeffer,  and  in  various  translations  it  was  spread 
through  Europe,  exercising  an  influence  wide  and  deep.  His 
first  important  notice  of  the  Dead  Sea  is  as  follows  :  "  In  this, 


*  For  Fulk  of  Chartres  and  crusading  travellers  generally,  see  Bongars'  Gesta 
Dei  and  the  French  Recueil;  also  histories  of  the  Crusades  by  Wilken,  Sybel,  Kug- 
ler,  and  others  ;  see  also  Robinson,  Biblical  Researches,  vol.  ii,  p.  109,  and  Tobler, 
Bibliographia  Geographica  Palestine?,  1867,  p.  12.  For  Benjamin  of  Tudela's  state- 
ment, see  Wright's  Collection  of  Travels  in  Palestine,  p.  84,  and  Asher's  edition  of 
Benjamin  of  Tudela's  travels,  vol.  i,  pp.  71,  72  ;  also  Charton,  vol.  i,  p.  180.  For 
Borchard  or  Burchard,  see  full  text  in  the  Rcyssbuch  dess  Heyligen  Landes  ;  also 
Grynaus,  Nov.  Orbis,  Basil.,  1532,  fol.  298,  329.  For  Ernoul,  see  his  L'Estat  de 
la  Cite"  de  Hierusalem,  in  Michelant  and  Raynaud,  Itindraires  Francaises  au  i2tne 
et  ijme  Siecles.  For  Petrus  Diaconus,  see  his  book  De  Locis  Sanctis,  edited  by 
Gamurrini,  Rome,  1887,  pp.  126,  127.  For  Mandeville  I  have  compared  several 
editions,  especially  those  in  the  Reyssbuch,  in  Canisius,  and  in  Wright,  with  Halli- 
well's  reprint  and  with  the  rare  Strasburg  edition  of  1484  in  the  Cornell  University 
Library  :  the  whole  statement  regarding  the  experiment  with  iron  and  feathers  is 
given  differently  in  different  copies.  The  statement  that  he  saw  the  feathers  sink 
and  the  iron  swim  is  made  in  the  Reyssbuch  edition,  Frankfort,  1584.  The  story, 
like  the  saints'  legends,  evidently  grew  as  time  went  on,  but  is  none  the  less  inter- 
esting as  showing  the  general  credulity.  Since  writing  the  above  I  have  been  glad 
to  find  my  view  of  Mandeville's  honesty  confirmed  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Robinson,  and 
by  Mr.  Gage  in  his  edition  of  Ritter's  Palestine. 


232   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

Tirus  the  serpent  is  found,  and  from  him  the  Tiriac  medicine 
is  made.  He  is  blind,  and  so  full  of  venom  that  there  is  no 
remedy  for  his  bite  except  cutting  off  the  bitten  part.  He 
can  only  be  taken  by  striking  him  and  making  him  angry  ; 
then  his  venom  flies  into  his  head  and  tail."  Breydenbach 
calls  the  Dead  Sea  "the  chimney  of  hell,"  and  repeats  the 
old  story  as  to  the  miraculous  solvent  for  its  bitumen.  He, 
too,  makes  the  statement  that  the  holy  water  of  the  Jordan 
does  not  mingle  with  the  accursed  water  of  the  infernal  sea, 
but  increases  the  miracle  which  Caumont  had  announced  by 
saying  that,  although  the  waters  appear  to  come  together, 
the  Jordan  is  really  absorbed  in  the  earth  before  it  reaches 
the  sea. 

As  to  Lot's  wife,  various  travellers  at  that  time  had  vari- 
ous fortunes.  Some,  like  Caumont  and  Breydenbach,  took 
her  continued  existence  for  granted ;  some,  like  Count  John 
of  Solms,  saw  her  and  were  greatly  edified  ;  some,  like  Hans 
Werli,  tried  to  find  her  and  could  not,  but,  like  St.  Silvia,  a 
thousand  years  before,  were  none  the  less  edified  by  the  idea 
that,  for  some  inscrutable  purpose,  the  sea  had  been  allowed 
to  hide  her  from  them  ;  some  found  her  larger  than  they  ex- 
pected,  even  forty  feet  high,  as  was  the  salt  pillar  which 
happened  to  be  standing  at  the  visit  of  Commander  Lynch 
in  1848  ;  but  this  only  added  a  new  proof  to  the  miracle,  for 
the  text  was  remembered,  "  There  were  giants  in  those  days." 

Out  of  the  mass  of  works  of  pilgrims  during  the  fifteenth 
century  I  select  just  one  more  as  typical  of  the  theological 
view  then  dominant,  and  this  is  the  noted  book  of  Felix 
Fabri,  a  preaching  friar  of  Ulm.  I  select  him,  because  even 
so  eminent  an  authority  in  our  own  time  as  Dr.  Edward 
Robinson  declares  him  to  have  been  the  most  thorough, 
thoughtful,  and  enlightened  traveller  of  that  century. 

Fabri  is  greatly  impressed  by  the  wonders  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  and  typical  of  his  honesty  influenced  by  faith  is  his  ac- 
count of  the  Dead  Sea  fruit ;  he  describes  it  with  almost  per- 
fect accuracy,  but  adds  the  statement  that  when  mature  it  is 
"  filled  with  ashes  and  cinders." 

As  to  the  salt  statue,  he  says:  "We  saw  the  place  be- 
tween the  sea  and  Mount  Segor,  but  could  not  see  the  statue 
itself   because  we  were    too  far   distant  to  see  anything  of 


MEDIAEVAL   GROWTH   OF   THE    DEAD   SEA    LEGENDS.    233 

human  size ;  but  we  saw  it  with  firm  faith,  because  we  be- 
lieved Scripture,  which  speaks  of  it;  and  we  were  filled  with 
wonder." 

To  sustain  absolute  faith  in  the  statue  he  reminds  his 
readers  that  "  God  is  able  even  of  these  stones  to  raise  up 
seed  to  Abraham,"  and  goes  into  a  long-  argument,  discuss- 
ing such  transformations  as  those  of  King  Atlas  and  Pyg- 
malion's statue,  with  a  multitude  of  others,  winding  up  with 
the  case,  given  in  the  miracles  of  St.  Jerome,  of  a  heretic  who 
was  changed  into  a  log  of  wood,  which  was  then  burned. 

He  gives  a  statement  of  the  Hebrews  that  Lot's  wife  re- 
ceived her  peculiar  punishment  because  she  had  refused  to 
add  salt  to  the  food  of  the  angels  when  they  visited  her,  and 
he  preaches  a  short  sermon  in  which  he  says  that,  as  salt  is 
the  condiment  of  food,  so  the  salt  statue  of  Lot's  wife  "gives 
us  a  condiment  of  wisdom."* 

There  were,  indeed,  many  discrepancies  in  the  testimony 
of  travellers  regarding  the  salt  pillar — so  many,  in  fact,  that 
at  a  later  period  the  learned  Dom  Calmet  acknowledged 
that  they  shook  his  belief  in  the  whole  matter;  but,  during 
this  earlier  time,  under  the  complete  sway  of  the  theological 
spirit,  these  difficulties  only  gave  new  and  more  glorious 
opportunities  for  faith. 

For,  if  a  considerable  interval  occurred  between  the  wash- 
ing of  one  salt  pillar  out  of  existence  and  the  washing  of  an- 
other into  existence,  the  idea  arose  that  the  statue,  by  virtue 
of  the  soul  which  still  remained  in  it,  had  departed  on  some 
mysterious  excursion.  Did  it  happen  that  one  statue  was 
washed  out  one  year  in  one  place  and  another  statue  another 
year  in  another  place,  this  difficulty  was  surmounted  by  be- 
lieving that  Lot's  wife  still  walked  about.  Did  it  happen  that 
a  salt  column  was  undermined  by  the  rains  and  fell,  this  was 


*  For  Bernard  of  Breydenbach,  I  have  used  the  Latin  edition,  Mentz,  i486,  in 
the  White  collection,  Cornell  University,  also  the  German  edition  in  the  Reyssbuch. 
For  John  of  Solms,  Werli,  and  the  like,  see  the  Reyssbuch,  which  gives  a  full  text  of 
their  travels.  For  Fabri  (Schmid),  see,  for  his  value,  Robinson  ;  also  Tobler,  Bib- 
liographia,  pp.  53  et  seq.  ;  and  for  texts,  see  Reyssbuch,  pp.  122b  et  seq.,  but  best  the 
Fratris  Fel.  Fabri  Evagatorium,  ed.  Hassler,  Stuttgart,  1843,  vol.  iii,  pp.  172  et 
seq.  His  book  has  now  been  translated  into  English  by  the  Palestine  Pilgrims' 
Text  Society. 


234 


DEAD    SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 


believed  to  be  but  another  sign  of  life.  Did  a  pillar  happen 
to  be  covered  in  part  by  the  sea,  this  was  enough  to  arouse 
the  belief  that  the  statue  from  time  to  time  descended  into 
the  Dead  Sea  depths — possibly  to  satisfy  that  old  fatal  curi- 
osity regarding  her  former  neighbours.  Did  some  smaller 
block  of  salt  happen  to  be  washed  out  near  the  statue,  it  was 
believed  that  a  household  dog,  also  transformed  into  salt, 
had  followed  her  back  from  beneath  the  deep.  Did  more 
statues  than  one  appear  at  one  time,  that  simply  made  the 
mystery  more  impressive. 

In  facts  now  so  easy  of  scientific  explanation  the  theo- 
logians found  wonderful  matter  for  argument. 

One  great  question  among  them  was  whether  the  soul  of 
Lot's  wife  did  really  remain  in  the  statue.  On  one  side  it  was 
insisted  that,  as  Holy  Scripture  declares  that  Lot's  wife  was 
changed  into  a  pillar  of  salt,  and  as  she  was  necessarily  made 
up  of  a  soul  and  a  body,  the  soul  must  have  become  part  of 
the  statue.  This  argument  was  clinched  by  citing  that  pas- 
sage in  the  Book  of  Wisdom  in  which  the  salt  pillar  is  de- 
clared to  be  still  standing  as  "  the  monument  of  an  unbeliev- 
ing soul."  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  insisted  that  the  soul  of 
the  woman  must  have  been  incorporeal  and  immortal,  and 
hence  could  not  have  been  changed  into  a  substance  corpo- 
real and  mortal.  Naturally,  to  this  it  would  be  answered 
that  the  salt  pillar  was  no  more  corporeal  than  the  ordinary 
materials  of  the  human  body,  and  that  it  had  been  made  mi- 
raculously immortal,  and  "with  God  all  things  are  possible." 
Thus  were  opened  long  vistas  of  theological  discussion.* 

As  we  enter  the  sixteenth  century  the  Dead  Sea  myths, 
and  especially  the  legends  of  Lot's  wife,  are  still  growing. 
In  1507  Father  Anselm  of  the  Minorites  declares  that  the 
sea  sometimes  covers  the  feet  of  the  statue,  sometimes  the 
legs,  sometimes  the  whole  body. 

In  1555,  Gabriel  Giraudet,  priest  at  Puy,  journeyed 
through  Palestine.  His  faith  was  robust,  and  his  attitude 
toward  the  myths  of  the  Dead  Sea  is  seen  by  his  declaration 


*  For  a  brief  statement  of  the  main  arguments  for  and  against  the  idea  that  the 
soul  of  Lot's  wife  remained  within  the  salt  statue,  see  Cornelius  a  Lapide,  Com- 
mentarius  in  Pentateuchum,  Antwerp,  1697,  chap.  xix. 


MEDIAEVAL    GROWTH    OF   THE   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS      «s 

that  its  waters  are  so  foul  that  one  can  smell  them  at  a  dis- 
tance of  three  leagues;  that  straw,  hay,  or  feathers  thrown 
into  them  will  sink,  but  that  iron  and  other  metals  will  float ; 
that  criminals  have  been  kept  in  them  three  or  four  days 
and  could  not  drown.  As  to  Lot's  wife,  he  says  that  he 
found  her  "  lying  there,  her  back  toward  heaven,  converted 
into  salt  stone  ;  for  I  touched  her,  scratched  her,  and  put  a 
piece  of  her  into  my  mouth,  and  she  tasted  salt." 

At  the  centre  of  all  these  legends  we  see,  then,  the  idea 
that,  though  there  were  no  living  beasts  in  the  Dead  Sea, 
the  people  of  the  overwhelmed  cities  were  still  living  be- 
neath its  waters,  probably  in  hell ;  that  there  was  life  in  the 
salt  statue  ;  and  that  it  was  still  curious  regarding  its  old 
neighbours. 

Hence  such  travellers  in  the  latter  years  of  the  century 
as  Count  Albert  of  Lowenstein  and  Prince  Nicolas  Radzi- 
will  are  not  at  all  weakened  in  faith  by  failing  to  find  the 
statue.  What  the  former  is  capable  of  believing  is  seen  by  his 
statement  that  in  a  certain  cemetery  at  Cairo  during  one 
night  in  the  year  the  dead  thrust  forth  their  feet,  hands, 
limbs,  and  even  rise  wholly  from  their  graves. 

There  seemed,  then,  no  limit  to  these  pious  beliefs.  The 
idea  that  there  is  merit  in  credulity,  with  the  love  of  myth- 
making  and  miracle-mongering,  constantly  made  them  larger. 
Nor  did  the  Protestant  Reformation  diminish  them  at  first ; 
it  rather  strengthened  them  and  fixed  them  more  firmly  in 
the  popular  mind.  They  seemed  destined  to  last  forever. 
How  they  were  thus  strengthened  at  first,  under  Protestant- 
ism, and  how  they  were  finally  dissolved  away  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  scientific  thought,  will  now  be  shown.* 

*  For  Father  Anselm,  see  his  Descriptio  Terra  Sanctis,  in  H.  Canisius,  The- 
saurus Monument.  Eccles.,  Basnage  edition,  Amsterdam,  1725,  vol.  iv,  p.  788.  For 
Giraudet,  see  his  Discours  du  Voyage  d'Outre-Mer,  Paris,  1585,  p.  56a.  For 
Radziwill  and  Lowenstein,  see  the  Reyssbuch,  especially  p.  198a. 


236  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO    COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

III.   POST-REFORMATION    CULMINATION   OF    THE    DEAD   SEA 
LEGENDS.— BEGINNINGS   OF   A   HEALTHFUL   SCEPTICISM. 

The  first  effect  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  was  to 
popularize  the  older  Dead  Sea  legends,  and  to  make  the 
public  mind  still  more  receptive  for  the  newer  ones. 

Luther's  great  pictorial  Bible,  so  powerful  in  fixing  the 
ideas  of  the  German  people,  showed  by  very  striking  engrav- 
ings all  three  of  these  earlier  myths — the  destruction  of  the 
cities  by  fire  from  heaven,  the  transformation  of  Lot's  wife, 
and  the  vile  origin  of  the  hated  Moabites  and  Ammonites; 
and  we  find  the  salt  statue,  especially,  in  this  and  other  pic- 
torial Bibles,  during  generation  after  generation. 

Catholic  peoples  also  held  their  own  in  this  display  of 
faith.  About  15 17  Francois  Regnault  published  at  Paris  a 
compilation  on  Palestine  enriched  with  woodcuts  :  in  this 
the  old  Dead  Sea  legend  of  the  "  serpent  Tyrus  "  reappears 
embellished,  and  with  it  various  other  new  versions  of  old 
stories.  Five  years  later  Bartholomew  de  Salignac  travels 
in  the  Holy  Land,  vouches  for  the  continued  existence  of 
the  Lot's  wife  statue,  and  gives  new  life  to  an  old  marvel  by 
insisting  that  the  sacred  waters  of  the  Jordan  are  not  really 
poured  into  the  infernal  basin  of  the  Dead  Sea,  but  that  they 
are  miraculously  absorbed  by  the  earth. 

These  ideas  were  not  confined  to  the  people  at  large  ;  we 
trace  them  among  scholars. 

In  1581,  Bunting,  a  North  German  professor  and  theo- 
logian, published  his  Itinerary  of  Holy  Scripture,  and  in  this 
the  Dead  Sea  and  Lot  legends  continue  to  increase.  He 
tells  us  that  the  water  of  the  sea  "  changes  three  times  every 
day  "  ;  that  it  "  spits  forth  fire  "  ;  that  it  throws  up  "  on  high  " 
great  foul  masses  which  "  burn  like  pitch  "  and  "  swim  about 
like  huge  oxen  "  ;  that  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife  is  still  there, 
and  that  it  shines  like  salt. 

In  1590,  Christian  Adrichom,  a  Dutch  theologian,  pub- 
lished his  famous  work  on  sacred  geography.  He  does  not 
insist  upon  the  Dead  Sea  legends  generally,  but  declares 
that  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife  is  still  in  existence,  and  on  his 
map  he  gives  a  picture  of  her  standing  at  Usdum. 

Nor  was  it  altogether  safe  to  dissent  from  such  beliefs. 


POST-REFORMATION   CULMINATION.  237 

Just  as,  under  the  papal  sway,  men  of  science  were 
severely  punished  for  wrong-  views  of  the  physical  geog- 
raphy of  the  earth  in  general,  so,  when  Calvin  decided  to 
burn  Servetus,  he  included  in  his  indictment  for  heresy  a 
charge  that  Servetus,  in  his  edition  of  Ptolemy,  had  made 
unorthodox  statements  regarding  the  physical  geography  of 
Palestine.* 

Protestants  and  Catholics  vied  with  each  other  in  the 
making  of  new  myths.  Thus,  in  his  Most  Devout  Journey, 
published  in  1608,  Jean  Zvallart,  Mayor  of  Ath  in  Hainault, 
confesses  himself  troubled  by  conflicting  stories  about  the 
salt  statue,  but  declares  himself  sound  in  the  faith  that  "  some 
vestige  of  it  still  remains,"  and  makes  up  for  his  bit  of  free- 
thinking  by  adding  a  new  mythical  horror  to  the  region — 
"  crocodiles,"  which,  with  the  serpents  and  the  "  foul  odour 
of  the  sea,"  prevented  his  visit  to  the  salt  mountains. 

In  161 5  Father  Jean  Boucher  publishes  the  first  of  many 
editions  of  his  Sacred  Bouquet  of  the  Holy  Land.  He  depicts 
the  horrors  of  the  Dead  Sea  in  a  number  of  striking  antith- 
eses, and  among  these  is  the  statement  that  it  is  made  of 
mud  rather  than  of  water,  that  it  soils  whatever  is  put  into 
it,  and  so  corrupts  the  land  about  it  that  not  a  blade  of  grass 
grows  in  all  that  region. 

In  the  same  spirit,  thirteen  years  later,  the  Protestant 
Christopher  Heidmann  publishes  his  Palcestina,  in  which  he 
speaks  of  a  fluid  resembling  blood  oozing  from  the  rocks 
about  the  Dead  Sea,  and  cites  authorities  to  prove  that  the 
statue  of  Lot's  wife  still  exists  and  gives  signs  of  life. 

Yet,  as  we  near  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  centurv,  some 


*  For  biblical  engravings  showing  Lot's  wife  transformed  into  a  salt  statue,  etc., 
see  Luther's  Bible,  1534,  p.  xi  ;  also  the  pictorial  Electoral  Bible;  also  Merian's 
/cones  Biblicce  of  1625  ;  also  the  frontispiece  of  the  Luther  Bible  published  at 
Nuremberg  in  1708  ;  also  Scheuchzer's  Knpfer-Bibcl,  Augsburg,  1731,  Tab.  lxxx. 
For  the  account  of  the  Dead  Sea  serpent  "Tyrus,"  etc.,  see  Le  Grand  Voyage  de 
Hierusalem,  Paris  (1517?),  p.  xxi.  For  De  Salignac's  assertion  regarding  the  salt 
pillar  and  suggestion  regarding  the  absorption  of  the  Jordan  before  reaching  the 
Dead  Sea,  see  his  Itinerarium  Sacra  Scriptura,  Magdeburg,  1593,  §§  34  and  35- 
For  Bunting,  see  his  Itinerarium  Sacra;  Scriptuiee,  Magdeburg,  1589,  pp.  78,  79. 
For  Adrichom's  picture  of  the  salt  statue,  see  map,  p.  38,  and  text,  p.  205,  of  his 
Theatrum  Terra  Sancttz,  1613.  For  Calvin  and  Servetus,  see  Willis,  Servetus 
and  Calvin,  pp.  96,  307  ;  also  the  Servetus  edition  of  Ptolemy. 


238  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

evidences  of  a  healthful  and  fruitful  scepticism  begin  to  ap- 
pear. 

The  old  stream  of  travellers,  commentators,  and  preach- 
ers, accepting  tradition  and  repeating  what  they  have  been 
told,  flows  on ;  but  here  and  there  we  are  refreshed  by  the 
sight  of  a  man  who  really  begins  to  think  and  look  for 
himself. 

First  among  these  is  the  French  naturalist  Pierre  Belon. 
As  regards  the  ordinary  wonders,  he  had  the  simple  faith  of 
his  time.  Among  a  multitude  of  similar  things,  he  believed 
that  he  saw  the  stones  on  which  the  disciples  were  sleeping 
during  the  prayer  of  Christ ;  the  stone  on  which  the  Lord 
sat  when  he  raised  Lazarus  from  the  dead  ;  the  Lord's  foot- 
prints on  the  stone  from  which  he  ascended  into  heaven  ;  and, 
most  curious  of  all,  "  the  stone  which  the  builders  rejected." 
Yet  he  makes  some  advance  on  his  predecessors,  since  he 
shows  in  one  passage  that  he  had  thought  out  the  process  by 
which  the  simpler  myths  of  Palestine  were  made.  For,  be- 
tween Bethlehem  and  Jerusalem,  he  sees  a  field  covered  with 
small  pebbles,  and  of  these  he  says:  "The  common  people 
tell  you  that  a  man  was  once  sowing  peas  there,  when  Our 
Lady  passed  that  way  and  asked  him  what  he  was  doing  ; 
the  man  answered,  '  I  am  sowing  pebbles,'  and  straightway 
all  the  peas  were  changed  into  these  little  stones." 

His  ascribing  belief  in  this  explanatory  transformation 
myth  to  the  "  common  people  "  marks  the  faint  dawn  of  a 
new  epoch. 

Typical  also  of  this  new  class  is  the  German  botanist 
Leonhard  Rauwolf.  He  travels  through  Palestine  in  1575, 
and,  though  devout  and  at  times  credulous,  notes  compara- 
tively few  of  the  old  wonders,  while  he  makes  thoughtful 
and  careful  mention  of  things  in  nature  that  he  really  saw  ; 
he  declines  to  use  the  eyes  of  the  monks,  and  steadily  uses 
his  own  to  good  purpose. 

As  we  go  on  in  the  seventeenth  century,  this  current  of 
new  thought  is  yet  more  evident ;  a  habit  of  observing 
more  carefully  and  of  comparing  observations  had  set  in  ; 
the  great  voyages  of  discovery  by  Columbus,  Vasco  da 
Gama,  Magellan,  and  others  were  producing  their  effect ; 
and  this  effect  was  increased  by  the  inductive  philosophy 


POST-REFORMATION   CULMINATION.  239 

of  Bacon,  the  reasonings  of  Descartes,  and  the  suggestions 
of  Montaigne. 

So  evident  was  this  current  that,  as  far  back  as  the  early 
days  of  the  century,  a  great  theologian,  Quaresmio  of  Lodi, 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  stop  it  forever.  In  1616,  there- 
fore, he  began  his  ponderous  work  entitled  The  Historical, 
Theological,  and  Moral  Explanation  of  the  Holy  Land.  He 
laboured  upon  it  for  nine  years,  gave  nine  years  more  to 
perfecting  it,  and  then  put  it  into  the  hands  of  the  great 
publishing  house  of  Plantin  at  Antwerp :  they  were  four 
years  in  printing  and  correcting  it,  and  when  it  at  last  ap- 
peared it  seemed  certain  to  establish  the  theological  view 
of  the  Holy  Land  for  all  time.  While  taking  abundant  care 
of  other  myths  which  he  believed  sanctified  by  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, Quaresmio  devoted  himself  at  great  length  to  the  Dead 
Sea,  but  above  all  to  the  salt  statue;  and  he  divides  his  chapter 
on  it  into  three  parts,  each  headed  by  a  question  :  First, 
"  How  was  Lot's  wife  changed  into  a  statue  of  salt  ?  "  sec- 
ondly, "  Where  was  she  thus  transformed?"  and,  thirdly, 
"Does  that  statue  still  exist?'''  Through  each  of  these  di- 
visions he  fights  to  the  end  all  who  are  inclined  to  swerve 
in  the  slightest  degree  from  the  orthodox  opinion.  He 
utterly  refuses  to  compromise  with  any  modern  theorists. 
To  all  such  he  says,  "  The  narration  of  Moses  is  historical 
and  is  to  be  received  in  its  natural  sense,  and  no  right-think- 
ing  man  will  deny  this."  To  those  who  favoured  the  figura- 
tive interpretation  he  says,  "  With  such  reasonings  any  pas- 
sage of  Scripture  can  be  denied." 

As  to  the  spot  where  the  miracle  occurred,  he  discusses 
four  places,  but  settles  upon  the  point  where  the  picture  of 
the  statue  is  given  in  Adrichom's  map.  As  to  the  continued 
existence  of  the  statue,  he  plays  with  the  opposing  view  as  a 
cat  fondles  a  mouse ;  and  then  shows  that  the  most  revered 
ancient  authorities,  venerable  men  still  living,  and  the  Bed- 
ouins, all  agree  that  it  is  still  in  being.  Throughout  the 
whole  chapter  his  thoroughness  in  scriptural  knowledge 
and  his  profundity  in  logic  are  only  excelled  by  his  scorn 
for  those  theologians  who  were  willing  to  yield  anything  to 
rationalism. 

So  powerful  was  this  argument  that  it  seemed  to  carry 


240 


DEAD    SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 


everything  before  it,  not  merely  throughout  the  Roman 
obedience,  but  among  the  most  eminent  theologians  of  Prot- 
estantism. 

As  regards  the  Roman  Church,  we  may  take  as  a  type 
the  missionary  priest  Eugene  Roger,  who,  shortly  after  the 
appearance  of  Quaresmio's  book,  published  his  own  travels 
in  Palestine.  He  was  an  observant  man,  and  his  work  counts 
among  those  of  real  value  ;  but  the  spirit  of  Quaresmio  had 
taken  possession  of  him  fully.  His  work  is  prefaced  with  a 
map  showing  the  points  of  most  importance  in  scriptural 
history,  and  among  these  he  identifies  the  place  where  Sam- 
son slew  the  thousand  Philistines  with  the  jawbone  of  an 
ass,  and  where  he  hid  the  gates  of  Gaza ;  the  cavern  which 
Adam  and  Eve  inhabited  after  their  expulsion  from  para- 
dise ;  the  spot  where  Balaam's  ass  spoke;  the  tree  on  which 
Absalom  was  hanged  :  the  place  where  Jacob  wrestled  with 
the  angel ;  the  steep  place  where  the  swine  possessed  of 
devils  plunged  into  the  sea ;  the  spot  where  the  prophet 
Elijah  was  taken  up  in  a  chariot  of  fire;  and,  of  course,  the 
position  of  the  salt  statue  which  was  once  Lot's  wife.  He 
not  only  indicates  places  on  land,  but  places  in  the  sea  ;  thus 
he  shows  where  Jonah  was  swallowed  by  the  whale,  and 
"  where  St.  Peter  caught  one  hundred  and  fifty-three  fishes." 

As  to  the  Dead  Sea  miracles  generally,  he  does  not  dwell 
on  them  at  great  length  ;  he  evidently  felt  that  Quaresmio 
had  exhausted  the  subject ;  but  he  shows  largely  the  fruits 
of  Quaresmio's  teaching  in  other  matters. 

So,  too,  we  find  the  thoughts  and  words  of  Quaresmio 
echoing  afar  through  the  German  universities,  in  public  dis- 
quisitions, dissertations,  and  sermons.  The  great  Bible  com- 
mentators, both  Catholic  and  Protestant,  generally  agreed  in 
accepting  them. 

But,  strong  as  this  theological  theory  was,  we  find  that, 
as  time  went  on,  it  required  to  be  braced  somewhat,  and  in 
1692  Wedelius,  Professor  of  Medicine  at  Jena,  chose  as  the 
subject  of  his  inaugural  address  The  Physiology  of  the  Destruc- 
tion of  Sodom  and  of  the  Statue  of  Salt. 

It  is  a  masterly  example  of  "  sanctified  science."  At  great 
length  he  dwells  on  the  characteristics  of  sulphur,  salt,  and 
thunderbolts  ;  mixes  up  scriptural  texts,  theology,  and  chem- 


POST-REFORMATION   CULMINATION. 


24] 


istry  after  a  most  bewildering  fashion  ;  and  finally  comes  to 
the  conclusion  that  a  thunderbolt,  flung  by  the  Almighty, 
calcined  the  body  of  Lot's  wife,  and  at  the  same  time  vitri- 
fied its  particles  into  a  glassy  mass  looking  like  salt.* 

Not  only  were  these  views  demonstrated,  so  far  as  theo- 
logico-scientific  reasoning  could  demonstrate  anything,  but 
it  was  clearly  shown,  by  a  continuous  chain  of  testimony 
from  the  earliest  ages,  that  the  salt  statue  at  Usdum  had 
been  recognised  as  the  body  of  Lot's  wife  by  Jews,  Mo- 
hammedans, and  the  universal  Christian  Church,  "  always, 
everywhere,  and  by  all." 

Under  the  influence  of  teachings  like  these — and  of  the 
winter  rains — new  wonders  began  to  appear  at  the  salt  pillar. 
In  1661  the  Franciscan  monk  Zwinner  published  his  travels 
in  Palestine,  and  gave  not  only  most  of  the  old  myths  re- 
garding the  salt  statue,  but  a  new  one,  in  some  respects 
more  striking  than  any  of  the  old — for  he  had  heard  that  a 
dog,  also  transformed  into  salt,  was  standing  by  the  side  of 
Lot's  wife. 

Even  the  more  solid  Benedictine  scholars  were  carried 
away,  and  we  find  in  the  Sacred  History  by  Prof.  Mezger,  of 
the  order  of  St.  Benedict,  published  in  1700,  a  renewal  of 
the  declaration  that  the  salt  statue  must  be  a  "perpetual 
memorial." 

*  For  Zvallart,  see  his  Tres-de'vot  Voyage  de  ferusalem,  Antwerp,  1608,  book  iv, 
chapter  viii.  His  journey  was  made  twenty  years  before.  For  Father  Boucher, 
see  his  Bouquet  de  la  Terre  Saincte,  Paris,  1622,  pp.  447,  448.  For  Heidmann, 
see  his  Palastina,  16S9,  pp.  58-62.  For  Belon's  credulity  in  matters  referred  to, 
see  his  Observations  de  Plusieurs  Singularitez,  etc.,  Paris,  1553,  pp.  141-144  ;  and 
for  the  legends  of  the  peas  changed  into  pebbles,  p.  145  ;  see  also  Lartet  in  De 
Luynes,  vol.  iii,  p.  II.  For  Rauwolf,  see  the  Reyssbuch,  and  Tobler,  Bibliographia. 
For  a  good  account  of  the  influence  of  Montaigne  in  developing  French  scepticism, 
see  Pre'vost-Paradol's  study  on  Montaigne  prefixed  to  the  Le  Clerc  edition  of  the 
Essays,  Paris,  1865  ;  also  the  well-known  passages  in  Lecky's  Rationalism  in 
Europe.  For  Quaresmio  I  have  consulted  both  the  Plantin  edition  of  1639  and  the 
superb  new  Venice  edition  of  1880- 'S2.  The  latter,  though  less  prized  by  book 
fanciers,  is  the  more  valuable,  since  it  contains  some  very  interesting  recent  notes. 
For  the  above  discussion,  see  Plantin  edition,  vol.  ii,  pp.  758  et  seq.,  and  Venice 
edition,  vol.  ii,  pp.  572-574.  As  to  the  effect  of  Quaresmio  on  the  Protestant 
Church,  see  Wedelius,  De  Statua  Salis,  Jenre,  1692,  pp.  6,  7,  and  elsewhere.  For 
Eugene  Roger,  see  his  La  Terre  Saincte,  Paris,  1664  ;  the  map,  showing  various 
sites  referred  to,  is  in  the  preface  ;  and  for  basilisks,  salamanders,  etc.,  see  pp.  89-92, 
139,  21S,  and  elsewhere. 
44 


242  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 

But  it  was  soon  evident  that  the  scientific  current  was 
still  working-  beneath  this  ponderous  mass  of  theological 
authority.  A  typical  evidence  of  this  we  find  in  1666  in  the 
travels  of  Doubdan,  a  canon  of  St.  Denis.  As  to  the  Dead 
Sea,  he  says  that  he  saw  no  smoke,  no  clouds,  and  no  "  black, 
sticky  water"  ;  as  to  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife,  he  says,  "  The 
moderns  do  not  believe  so  easily  that  she  has  lasted  so  long  "  ; 
then,  as  if  alarmed  at  his  own  boldness,  he  concedes  that  the 
sea  may  be  black  and  sticky  in  the  middle ;  and  from  Lot's 
wife  he  escapes  under  cover  of  some  pious  generalities. 
Four  years  later  another  French  ecclesiastic,  Jacques  Gou- 
jon,  referring  in  his  published  travels  to  the  legends  of  the 
salt  pillar,  says :  "  People  may  believe  these  stories  as  much 
as  they  choose ;  I  did  not  see  it,  nor  did  1  go  there."  So, 
too,  in  1697,  Morison,  a  dignitary  of  the  French  Church, 
having  travelled  in  Palestine,  confesses  that,  as  to  the  story 
of  the  pillar  of  salt,  he  has  difficulty  in  believing  it. 

The  same  current  is  observed  working  still  more  strongly 
in  the  travels  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Maundrell,  an  English  chap- 
lain at  Aleppo,  who  travelled  through  Palestine  during  the 
same  year.  He  pours  contempt  over  the  legends  of  the 
Dead  Sea  in  general  :  as  to  the  story  that  birds  could  not 
fly  over  it,  he  says  that  he  saw  them  flying  there  ;  as  to  the 
utter  absence  of  life  in  the  sea,  he  saw  small  shells  in  it;  he 
saw  no  traces  of  any  buried  cities ;  and  as  to  the  stories 
regarding  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife  and  the  proposal  to  visit 
it,  he  says,  "  Nor  could  we  give  faith  enough  to  these  reports 
to  induce  us  to  go  on  such  an  errand." 

The  influence  of  the  Baconian  philosophy  on  his  mind  is 
very  clear  ;  for,  in  expressing  his  disbelief  in  the  Dead  Sea 
apples,  with  their  contents  of  ashes,  he  says  that  he  saw 
none,  and  he  cites  Lord  Bacon  in  support  of  scepticism  on 
this  and  similar  points. 

But  the  strongest  effect  of  this  growing  scepticism  is 
seen  near  the  end  of  that  century,  when  the  eminent  Dutch 
commentator  Clericus  (Le  Clerc)  published  his  commentary 
on  the  Pentateuch  and  his  Dissertation  on  the  Statue  of  Salt. 

At  great  length  he  brings  all  his  shrewdness  and  learning 
to  bear  against  the  whole  legend  of  the  actual  transformation 
of  Lot's  wife  and  the  existence  of  the  salt  pillar,  and  ends  by 


TOST-REFORMATION    CULMINATION.  243 

saying  that  "the  whole  story  is  due  to  the  vanity  of  some 
and  the  credulity  of  more." 

In  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  we  find  new 
tributaries  to  this  rivulet  of  scientific  thought.  In  1701 
Father  Felix  Beaugrand  dismisses  the  Dead  Sea  legends 
and  the  salt  statue  very  curtly  and  dryly — expressing  not 
his  belief  in  it,  but  a  conventional  wish  to  believe. 

In  1709  a  scholar  appeared  in  another  part  of  Europe 
and  of  different  faith,  who  did  far  more  than  any  of  his 
predecessors  to  envelop  the  Dead  Sea  legends  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  truth — Adrian  Reland,  professor  at  the  University 
of  Utrecht.  His  work  on  Palestine  is  a  monument  of  patient 
scholarship,  having  as  its  nucleus  a  love  of  truth  as  truth  : 
there  is  no  irreverence  in  him,  but  he  quietly  brushes  away 
a  great  mass  of  myths  and  legends:  as  to  the  statue  of  Lot's 
wife,  he  treats  it  warily,  but  applies  the  comparative  method 
to  it  with  killing  effect,  by  showing  that  the  story  of  its 
miraculous  renewal  is  but  one  among  many  of  its  kind.* 

Yet  to  superficial  observers  the  old  current  of  myth  and 
marvel  seemed  to  flow  into  the  eighteenth  century  as  strong 
as  ever,  and  of  this  we  may  take  two  tvpical  evidences.  The 
first  of  these  is  the  Pious  Pilgrimage  of  Vincent  Briemle.  His 
journey  was  made  about  1710;  and  his  work,  brought  out 
under  the  auspices  of  a  high  papal  functionary  some  years 
later,  in  a  heavy  quarto,  gave  new  life  to  the  stories  of  the 
hellish  character  of  the  Dead  Sea,  and  especially  to  the 
miraculous  renewal  of  the  salt  statue. 

In  1720  came  a  still  more  striking  effort  to  maintain  the 
old  belief  in  the  north  of  Europe,  for  in  that  year  the  emi- 
nent theologian  Masius  published  his  great  treatise  on  The 
Conversion  of  Lot's  Wife  into  a  Statue  of  Salt. 

Evidently  intending  that  this  work  should  be  the  last 

*  For  Zwinner,  see  his  Blumenbuch  des  Heyligen  Landes,  Miinchen,  i66r,  p. 
454.  For  Mezger,  see  his  Sacra  Historia,  Augsburg,  1700,  p.  30.  For  Doubdan. 
see  his  Voyage  de  la  Terre-Sainte,  Paris,  1670,  pp.  338,  339  ;  also  Tobler  and  Gage's 
Ritter.  For  Goujon,  see  his  Histoire  et  Voyage  de  la  Terre  Saincte,  Lyons,  1670, 
p.  230,  etc.  For  Morison,  see  his  Voyage,  book  ii,  pp.  516,  517.  For  Maundrell, 
see  in  Wright's  Collection,  pp.  383  et  sea.  For  Clericus,  see  his  Dissertatio  de  Salts 
Statua,  in  his  Pentateuch,  edition  of  1696,  pp.  327  et  sea.  For  Father  Beaugrand, 
see  his  Voyage,  Paris,  1701,  pp.  137  et  sea.  For  Reland,  see  his  Palcestina,  Utrecht, 
1714,  vol.  i,  pp.  61-254,  passim. 


244  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS    TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

word  on  this  subject  in  Germany,  as  Quaresmio  had  im- 
agined that  his  work  would  be  the  last  in  Italy,  he  develops 
his  subject  after  the  high  scholastic  and  theologic  manner. 
Calling  attention  first  to  the  divine  command  in  the  New 
Testament,  "  Remember  Lot's  wife,"  he  argues  through  a 
long  series  of  chapters.  In  the  ninth  of  these  he  discusses 
"  the  impelling  cause  "  of  her  looking  back,  and  introduces  us 
to  the  question,  formerly  so  often  treated  by  theologians, 
whether  the  soul  of  Lot's  wife  was  finally  saved.  Here  we 
are  glad  to  learn  that  the  big,  warm  heart  of  Luther  lifted 
him  above  the  common  herd  of  theologians,  and  led  him  to 
declare  that  she  was  "  a  faithful  and  saintly  woman,"  and 
that  she  certainly  was  not  eternally  damned.  In  justice  to 
the  Roman  Church  also  it  should  be  said  that  several  of  her 
most  eminent  commentators  took  a  similar  view,  and  in- 
sisted that  the  sin  of  Lot's  wife  was  venial,  and  there- 
fore, at  the  worst,  could  only  subject  her  to  the  fires  of  pur- 
gatory. 

The  eleventh  chapter  discusses  at  length  the  question 
liozv  she  was  converted  into  salt,  and,  mentioning  many  the- 
ological opinions,  dwells  especially  upon  the  view  of  Rivetus, 
that  a  thunderbolt,  made  up  apparently  of  fire,  sulphur,  and 
salt,  wrought  her  transformation  at  the  same  time  that  it 
blasted  the  land  ;  and  he  bases  this  opinion  upon  the  twenty- 
ninth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy  and  the  one  hundred  and 
seventh  Psalm. 

Later,  Masius  presents  a  sacred  scientific  theory  that 
"  saline  particles  entered  into  her  until  her  whole  body  was 
infected  "  ;  and  with  this  he  connects  another  piece  of  sancti- 
fied science,  to  the  effect  that  "stagnant  bile  "  may  have  ren- 
dered the  surface  of  her  body  "  entirely  shining,  bitter,  dry, 
and  deformed." 

Finally,  he  comes  to  the  great  question  whether  the  salt 
pillar  is  still  in  existence.  On  this  he  is  full  and  fair.  On 
one  hand  he  allows  that  Luther  thought  that  it  was  involved 
in  the  general  destruction  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  and  he 
cites  various  travellers  who  had  failed  to  find  it ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  gives  a  long  chain  of  evidence  to  show  that 
it  continued  to  exist:  very  wisely  he  reminds  the  reader 
that  the  positive  testimony  of  those  who  have  seen  it  must 


POST-REFORMATION    CULMINATION. 


245 


outweigh  the  negative  testimony  of  those  who  have  not,  and 
he  finally  decides  that  the  salt  statue  is  still  in  being. 

No  doubt  a  work  like  this  produced  a  considerable  effect 
in  Protestant  countries ;  indeed,  this  effect  seems  evident  as 
far  off  as  England,  for,  in  1720,  we  find  in  Dean  Prideaux's 
Old  and  New  Testament  connected  a  map  on  which  the  statue 
of  salt  is  carefully  indicated.  So,  too,  in  Holland,  in  the 
Sacred  Geography  published  at  Utrecht  in  1758  by  the  theo- 
logian Bachiene,  we  find  him,  while  showing  many  signs  of 
rationalism,  evidently  inclined  to  the  old  views  as  to  the 
existence  of  the  salt  pillar;  but  just  here  comes  a  curious 
evidence  of  the  real  direction  of  the  current  of  thought 
through  the  century,  for,  nine  years  later,  in  the  German 
translation  of  Bachiene's  work  we  find  copious  notes  by  the 
translator  in  a  far  more  rationalistic  spirit ;  indeed,  we  see 
the  dawn  of  the  inevitable  day  of  compromise,  for  we  now 
have,  instead  of  the  old  argument  that  the  divine  power  by 
one  miraculous  act  changed  Lot's  wife  into  a  salt  pillar,  the 
suggestion  that  she  was  caught  in  a  shower  of  sulphur  and 
saltpetre,  covered  by  it,  and  that  the  result  was  a  lump, 
which  in  a  general  way  is  called  in  our  sacred  books  "  a 
pillar  of  salt."  * 

But,  from  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  new 
current  sets  through  Christendom  with  ever-increasing 
strength.  Very  interesting  is  it  to  compare  the  great  scrip- 
tural commentaries  of  the  middle  of  this  century  with  those 
published  a  century  earlier. 

Of  the  earlier  ones  we  may  take  Matthew  Poole's  Synop- 
sis as  a  type:  as  authorized  by  royal  decree  in  1667  it  con- 
tains very  substantial  arguments  for  the  pious  belief  in  the 
statue.  Of  the  later  ones  we  may  take  the  edition  of  the 
noted  commentary  of  the  Jesuit  Tirinus  seventy  years  later: 
while  he  feels  bound  to  present  the  authorities,  he  evidently 
endeavours  to  get  rid  of  the  subject  as  speedily  as  possible 

*  For  Briemle,  see  his  And&chtige  Pilgerfahrt,  p.  129.  For  Masius,  see  his 
De  Uxore  Lothi  in  Statuam  Satis  conversa,  Hafniae,  1720,  especially  pp.  29-31. 
For  Dean  Prideaux,  see  his  Old  and  New  Testament  connected  in  the  History 
of  the  Jews,  1720,  map  at  page  7.  For  Bachiene,  see  his  Historische  und  geo- 
graphiscke  Beschreibung  von  Palcsstina,  Leipzig,  1766,  vol.  i,  pp.  118-120,  and 
notes. 


246  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS    TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

under  cover  of  conventionalities ;  of  the  spirit  of  Quaresmio 
he  shows  no  trace.* 

About  1760  came  a  striking  evidence  of  the  strength  of 
this  new  current.  The  Abate  Mariti  then  published  his 
book  upon  the  Holy  Land  ;  and  of  this  book,  by  an  Italian 
ecclesiastic,  the  most  eminent  of  German  bibliographers  in 
this  field  says  that  it  first  broke  a  path  for  critical  study  of 
the  Holy  Land.  Mariti  is  entirely  sceptical  as  to  the  sink- 
ing of  the  valley  of  Siddim  and  the  overwhelming  of  the 
cities.  He  speaks  kindly  of  a  Capuchin  Father  who  saw 
everywhere  at  the  Dead  Sea  traces  of  the  divine  maledic- 
tion, while  he  himself  could  not  see  them,  and  says,  "  It  is 
because  a  Capuchin  carries  everywhere  the  five  senses  of 
faith,  while  I  only  carry  those  of  nature."  He  speaks  of 
"the  lies  of  Josephus,"  and  makes  merry  over  "  the  rude 
and  shapeless  block"  which  the  guide  assured  him  was  the 
statue  of  Lot's  wife,  explaining  the  want  of  human  form  in 
the  salt  pillar  by  telling  him  that  this  complete  metamor- 
phosis was  part  of  her  punishment^ 

About  twenty  years  later,  another  remarkable  man,  Vol- 
ney,  broaches  the  subject  in  what  was  then  known  as  the 
"  philosophic  "  spirit.  Between  the  years  1783  and  1785  he 
made  an  extensive  journey  through  the  Holy  Land  and  pub- 
lished a  volume  of  travels  which  by  acuteness  of  thought 
and  vigour  of  style  secured  general  attention.  In  these, 
myth  and  legend  were  thrown  aside,  and  we  have  an  ac- 
count simply  dictated  by  the  love  of  truth  as  truth.  He, 
too,  keeps  the  torch  of  science  burning  by  applying  his 
Sfeoloofical  knowledge  to  the  regions  which  he  traverses. 

As  we  look  back  over  the  eighteenth  century  we  see 
mingled  with  the  new  current  of  thought,  and  strengthening 
it,  a  constantly  increasing  stream  of  more  strictly  scientific 
observation  and  reflection. 

To  review  it  briefly  :  in  the  very  first  years  of  the  century 
Maraldi  showed  the  Paris  Academy  of  Sciences  fossil  fishes 
found  in  the  Lebanon  region  ;  a  little  later,  Cornelius  Bruyn, 
in  the  French  edition  of  his  Eastern  travels,  e:ave  well-drawn 


*  For  Poole  (Polus)  see  his  Synopsis,  1669,  p.  179  ;  and  for  Tirinus,  the  Lyons 
edition  of  his  Commentary,  1736,  p.  10. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCEPTICISM. 


'■47 


representations  of  fossil  fishes  and  shells,  some  of  them  from 
the  region  of  the  Dead  Sea;  about  the  middle  of  the  cen- 
tury Richard  Pococke,  Bishop  of  Meath,  and  Korte  of  Al- 
tona  made  more  statements  of  the  same  sort ;  and  toward 
the  close  of  the  century,  as  we  have  seen,  Volney  gave  still 
more  of  these  researches,  with  philosophical  deductions 
from  them. 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that  there  gradually  dawned 
upon  thinking  men  the  conviction  that,  for  ages  before  the 
appearance  of  man  on  the  planet,  and  during  all  the  period 
since  his  appearance,  natural  laws  have  been  steadily  in  force 
in  Palestine  as  elsewhere ;  this  conviction  obliged  men  to 
consider  other  than  supernatural  causes  for  the  phenomena 
of  the  Dead  Sea,  and  myth  and  marvel  steadily  shrank  in 
value. 

But  at  the  very  threshold  of  the  nineteenth  century 
Chateaubriand  came  into  the  field,  and  he  seemed  to  banish 
the  scientific  spirit,  though  what  he  really  did  was  to  conceal 
it  temporarily  behind  the  vapours  of  his  rhetoric.  The  time 
was  propitious  for  him.  It  was  the  period  of  reaction  after 
the  French  Revolution,  when  what  was  called  religion  was 
again  in  fashion,  and  when  even  atheists  supported  it  as  a 
good  thing  for  common  people:  of  such  an  epoch  Chateau- 
briand, with  his  superficial  information,  thin  sentiment,  and 
showy  verbiage,  was  the  foreordained  prophet.  His  enemies 
were  wont  to  deny  that  he  ever  saw  the  Holy  Land  ;  wheth- 
er he  did  or  not,  he  added  nothing  to  real  knowledge,  but 
simply  threw  a  momentary  glamour  over  the  regions  he  de- 
scribed, and  especially  over  the  Dead  Sea.  The  legend  of 
Lot's  wife  he  carefully  avoided,  for  he  knew  too  well  the 
danger  of  ridicule  in  France. 

As  long  as  the  Napoleonic  and  Bourbon  reigns  lasted, 
and  indeed  for  some  time  afterward,  this  kind  of  dealing 
with  the  Holy  Land  was  fashionable,  and  we  have  a  long 
series  of  men,  especially  of  Frenchmen,  who  evidently  re- 
ceived their  impulse  from  Chateaubriand. 

About  1 83 1  De  Geramb,  Abbot  of  La  Trappe,  evidently 
a  very  noble  and  devout  spirit,  sees  vapour  above  the  Dead 
Sea,  but  stretches  the  truth  a  little — speaking  of  it  as  "  va- 
pour or  smoke."    He  could  not  find  the  salt  statue,  and  com- 


248     DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

plains  of  the  "  diversity  of  stories  regarding  it."  The  sim- 
ple physical  cause  of  this  diversity — the  washing  out  of  dif- 
ferent statues  in  different  years — never  occurs  to  him  ;  but 
he  comforts  himself  with  the  scriptural  warrant  for  the 
metamorphosis.* 

But  to  the  honour  of  scientific  men  and  scientific  truth  it 
should  be  said  that  even  under  Napoleon  and  the  Bourbons 
there  were  men  who  continued  to  explore,  observe,  and  de- 
scribe with  the  simple  love  of  truth  as  truth,  and  in  spite  of 
the  probability  that  their  researches  would  be  received  dur- 
ing their  lifetime  with  contempt  and  even  hostility,  both  in 
church  and  state. 

The  pioneer  in  this  work  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
the  German  naturalist  Ulrich  Seetzen.  He  began  his  main 
investigation  in  1806,  and  soon  his  learning,  courage,  and 
honesty  threw  a  flood  of  new  light  into  the  Dead  Sea 
questions. 

In  this  light,  myth  and  legend  faded  more  rapidly  than 
ever.  Typical  of  his  method  is  his  examination  of  the  Dead 
Sea  fruit.  He  found,  on  reaching  Palestine,  that  Josephus's 
story  regarding  it,  which  had  been  accepted  for  nearly  two 
thousand  years,  was  believed  on  all  sides ;  more  than  this, 
he  found  that  the  original  myth  had  so  grown  that  a  multi- 
tude of  respectable  people  at  Bethlehem  and  elsewhere  as- 
sured him  that  not  only  apples,  but  pears,  pomegranates, 
figs,  lemons,  and  many  other  fruits  which  grow  upon  the 
shores  of  the  Dead  Sea,  though  beautiful  to  look  upon,  were 
filled  with  ashes.  These  good  people  declared  to  Seetzen 
that  they  had  seen  these  fruits,  and  that,  not  long  before,  a 
basketful  of  them  which  had  been  sent  to  a  merchant  of 
Jaffa  had  turned  to  ashes. 

Seetzen  was  evidently  perplexed   by  this  mass  of  testi- 


*  For  Mariti,  see  his  Voyage,  etc.,  vol.  ii,  pp.  352_35°-  For  Tobler"s  high 
opinion  of  him,  see  the  Bibliographia,  pp.  132,  133.  For  Volney,  see  his  Voyage 
en  Syrie  et  Egypte,  Paris,  1807,  vol.  i,  pp.  308  et  sea. ;  also,  for  a  statement  of  con- 
tributions of  the  eighteenth  century  to  geology,  Lartet  in  De  Luynes's  Mer  Morte, 
vol.  iii,  p.  12.  For  Cornelius  Bruyn,  see  French  edition  of  his  works,  J  714  (in 
which  his  name  is  given  as  "  Le  Brun  "),  especially  for  representations  of  fossils, 
pp.  309,  37£.  For  Chateaubriand,  see  his  Voyage,  etc.,  vol.  ii,  part  iii.  For  De 
Geramb,  see  his  Voyage,  vol.  ii,  pp.  45-47. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCEPTICISM.  249 

mony  and  naturally  anxious  to  examine  these  fruits.  On 
arriving  at  the  sea  he  began  to  look  for  them,  and  the  guide 
soon  showed  him  the  "apples."  These  he  found  to  be  sim- 
ply an  asclcpia,  which  had  been  described  by  Linnaeus,  and 
which  is  found  in  the  East  Indies,  Arabia,  Egypt,  Jamaica, 
and  elsewhere — the  "  ashes  "  being  simply  seeds.  He  looked 
next  for  the  other  fruits,  and  the  guide  soon  found  for  him 
the  "lemons":  these  he  discovered  to  be  a  species  of  sola- 
tium found  in  other  parts  of  Palestine  and  elsewhere,  and  the 
seeds  in  these  were  the  famous  "  cinders."  He  looked  next 
for  the  pears,  figs,  and  other  accursed  fruits ;  but,  instead  of 
finding  them  filled  with  ashes  and  cinders,  he  found  them 
like  the  same  fruits  in  other  lands,  and  he  tells  us  that  he  ate 
the  figs  with  much  pleasure. 

So  perished  a  myth  which  had  been  kept  alive  two  thou- 
sand years, — partly  by  modes  of  thought  natural  to  theolo- 
gians, partly  by  the  self-interest  of  guides,  and  partly  by  the 
love  of  marvel-mongering  among  travellers. 

The  other  myths  fared  no  better.  As  to  the  appearance 
of  the  sea,  he  found  its  waters  not  "  black  and  sticky,"  but 
blue  and  transparent ;  he  found  no  smoke  rising  from  the 
abyss,  but  tells  us  that  sunlight  and  cloud  and  shore  were 
pleasantly  reflected  from  the  surface.  As  to  Lot's  wife,  he 
found  no  salt  pillar  which  had  been  a  careless  woman,  but 
the  Arabs  showed  him  many  boulders  which  had  once  been 
wicked  men. 

His  work  was  worthily  continued  by  a  long  succession 
of  true  investigators, — among  them  such  travellers  or  ge- 
ographers as  Burckhardt,  Irby,  Mangles,  Fallmerayer,  and 
Carl  von  Raumer :  by  men  like  these  the  atmosphere  of 
myth  and  legend  was  steadily  cleared  away  ;  as  a  rule,  they 
simply  forgot  Lot's  wife  altogether. 

In  this  noble  succession  should  be  mentioned  an  Amer- 
ican theologian,  Dr.  Edward  Robinson,  professor  at  New 
York.  Beginning  about  1826,  he  devoted  himself  for  thirty 
years  to  the  thorough  study  of  the  geography  of  Palestine, 
and  he  found  a  worthy  coadjutor  in  another  American 
divine,  Dr.  Eli  Smith.  Neither  of  these  men  departed 
openly  from  the  old  traditions  :  that  would  have  cost  a 
heart-breaking    price— the    loss   of  all    further   opportunity 


2 to   DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

to  carry  on  their  researches.  Robinson  did  not  even  think 
it  best  to  call  attention  to  the  mythical  character  of  much 
on  which  his  predecessors  had  insisted;  he  simply  brought 
in,  more  and  more,  the  dry,  clear  atmosphere  of  the  love 
of  truth  for  truth's  sake,  and,  in  this,  myths  and  legends 
steadily  disappeared.  By  doing  this  he  rendered  a  far 
greater  service  to  real  Christianity  than  any  other  theolo- 
gian had  ever  done  in  this  field. 

Very  characteristic  is  his  dealing  with  the  myth  of  Lot's 
wife.  Though  more  than  once  at  Usdum, — though  giving 
valuable  information  regarding  the  sea,  shore,  and  moun- 
tains there,  he  carefully  avoids  all  mention  of  the  salt  pillar 
and  of  the  legend  which  arose  from  it.  In  this  he  set  an 
example  followed  by  most  of  the  more  thoughtful  religious 
travellers  since  his  time.  Very  significant  is  it  to  see  the 
New  Testament  injunction,  "  Remember  Lot's  wife,"  so  utter- 
ly forgotten.  These  later  investigators  seem  never  to  have 
heard  of  it ;  and  this  constant  forgetfulness  shows  the  change 
which  had  taken  place  in  the  enlightened  thinking  of  the 
world. 

But  in  the  year  1848  came  an  episode  very  striking  in  its 
character  and  effect. 

At  that  time,  the  war  between  the  United  States  and 
Mexico  having  closed,  Lieutenant  Lynch,  of  the  United 
States  Navy,  found  himself  in  the  port  of  Vera  Cruz,  com- 
manding an  old  hulk,  the  Supply.  Looking  about  for  some- 
thing to  do,  it  occurred  to  him  to  write  to  the  Secretary 
of  the  Navy  asking  permission  to  explore  the  Dead  Sea. 
Under  ordinary  circumstances  the  proposal  would  doubtless 
have  been  strangled  with  red  tape  ;  but,  fortunately,  the  Sec- 
retary at  that  time  was  Mr.  John  Y.  Mason,  of  Virginia. 
Mr.  Mason  was  famous  for  his  good  nature.  Both  at  Wash- 
ington and  at  Paris,  where  he  was  afterward  minister,  this 
predominant  trait  has  left  a  multitude  of  amusing  traditions  ; 
it  was  of  him  that  Senator  Benton  said,  "  To  be  supremely 
happy  he  must  have  his  paunch  full  of  oysters  and  his  hands 
full  of  cards." 

The  Secretary  granted  permission,  but  evidently  gave 
the  matter  not  another  thought.  As  a  result,  came  an  ex- 
pedition the  most  comical  and  one  of  the  most  rich  in  results 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCEPTICISM.  2"I 

to  be  found  in  American  annals.  Never  was  anything  so 
happy-go-lucky.  Lieutenant  Lynch  started  with  his  hulk, 
with  hardly  an  instrument  save  those  ordinarily  found  on 
shipboard,  and  with  a  body  of  men  probably  the  most  unfit 
for  anything  like  scientific  investigation  ever  sent  on  such 
an  errand  ;  fortunately,  he  picked  up  a  young  instructor  in 
mathematics,  Mr.  Anderson,  and  added  to  his  apparatus  two 
strong  iron  boats. 

Arriving,  after  a  tedious  voyage,  on  the  coast  of  Asia 
Minor,  he  set  to  work.  He  had  no  adequate  preparation  in 
general  history, archaeology,  or  the  physical  sciences;  but  he 
had  his  American  patriotism,  energy,  pluck,  pride,  and  de- 
votion to  duty,  and  these  qualities  stood  him  in  good  stead. 
With  great  labour  he  got  the  iron  boats  across  the  country. 
Then  the  tug  of  war  began.  First  of  all  investigators,  he 
forced  his  way  through  the  whole  length  of  the  river  Jordan 
and  from  end  to  end  of  the  Dead  Sea.  There  were  constant 
difficulties — geographical,  climatic,  and  personal ;  but  Lynch 
cut  through  them  all.  He  was  brave  or  shrewd,  as  there 
was  need.  Anderson  proved  an  admirable  helper,  and  to- 
gether they  made  surveys  of  distances,  altitudes,  depths,  and 
sundry  simple  investigations  in  a  geological,  mineralogical, 
and  chemical  way.  Much  was  poorly  done,  much  was  left 
undone,  but  the  general  result  was  most  honourable  both  to 
Lynch  and  Anderson  ;  and  Secretary  Mason  found  that  his 
easy-going  patronage  of  the  enterprise  was  the  best  act  of 
his  official  life. 

The  results  of  this  expedition  on  public  opinion  were 
most  curious.  Lynch  was  no  scholar  in  any  sense ;  he  had 
travelled  little,  and  thought  less  on  the  real  questions  under- 
lying the  whole  investigation  ;  as  to  the  difference  in  depth 
of  the  two  parts  of  the  lake,  he  jumped — with  a  sailor's  dis- 
regard of  logic — to  the  conclusion  that  it  somehow  proved 
the  mythical  account  of  the  overwhelming  of  the  cities,  and 
he  indulged  in  reflections  of  a  sort  probably  suggested  by 
his  recollections  of  American  Sunday-schools. 

Especially  noteworthy  is  his  treatment  of  the  legend  of 
Lot's  wife.  He  found  the  pillar  of  salt.  It  happened  to  be 
at  that  period  a  circular  column  of  friable  salt  rock,  about 
forty  feet  high  ;  yet,  while  he  accepts  every  other  old  myth, 


252  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

he  treats  the  belief  that  this  was  once  the  wife  of  Lot  as  "a 
superstition." 

One  little  circumstance  added  enormously  to  the  influ- 
ence of  this  book,  for,  as  a  frontispiece,  he  inserted  a  picture 
of  the  salt  column.  It  was  delineated  in  rather  a  poetic 
manner:  light  streamed  upon  it,  heavy  clouds  hung-  above 
it,  and,  as  a  background,  were  ranged  buttresses  of  salt  rock 
furrowed  and  channelled  out  by  the  winter  rains :  this  salt 
statue  picture  was  spread  far  and  wide,  and  in  thousands  of 
country  pulpits  and  Sunday-schools  it  was  shown  as  a  tribute 
of  science  to  Scripture. 

Nor  was  this  influence  confined  to  American  Sunday- 
school  children  :  Lynch  had  innocently  set  a  trap  into  which 
several  European  theologians  stumbled.  One  of  these 
was  Dr.  Lorenz  Gratz,  Vicar-General  of  Augsburg,  a  theo- 
logical professor.  In  the  second  edition  of  his  TJicatrc  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures,  published  in  1858,  he  hails  Lynch's  discovery 
of  the  salt  pillar  with  joy,  forgets  his  allusion  to  the  old  the- 
ory regarding  it  as  a  superstition,  and  does  not  stop  to  learn 
that  this  was  one  of  a  succession  of  statues  washed  out  yearly 
by  the  rains,  but  accepts  it  as  the  original  Lot's  wife. 

The  French  churchmen  suffered  most.  About  two  years 
after  Lynch,  De  Saulcy  visited  the  Dead  Sea  to  explore  it 
thoroughly,  evidently  in  the  interest  of  sacred  science — and 
of  his  own  promotion.  Of  the  modest  thoroughness  of  Rob- 
inson there  is  no  trace  in  his  writings.  He  promptly  dis- 
covered the  overwhelmed  cities,  which  no  one  before  or 
since  has  ever  found,  poured  contempt  on  other  investiga- 
tors, and  threw  over  his  whole  work  an  air  of  piety.  But, 
unfortunately,  having  a  Frenchman's  dread  of  ridicule,  he 
attempted  to  give  a  rationalistic  explanation  of  what  he  calls 
"  the  enormous  needles  of  salt  washed  out  by  the  winter 
rain,"  and  their  connection  with  the  Lot's  wife  myth,  and 
declared  his  firm  belief  that  she,  "  being  delayed  by  curiosity 
or  terror,  was  crushed  by  a  rock  which  rolled  down  from 
the  mountain,  and  when  Lot  and  his  children  turned  about 
they  saw  at  the  place  where  she  had  been  only  the  rock  of 
salt  which  covered  her  body." 

But  this  would  not  do  at  all,  and  an  eminent  ecclesiastic 
privately  and  publicly  expostulated  with  De  Saulcy — very 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCEPTICISM. 


253 


naturally  declaring  that  "  it  was  not  Lot  who  wrote  the  book 
of  Genesis." 

The  result  was  that  another  edition  of  De  Saulcy's  work 
was  published  by  a  Church  Book  Society,  with  the  offend- 
ing passage  omitted;  but  a  passage  was  retained  really  far 
more  suggestive  of  heterodoxy,  and  this  was  an  Arab  legend 
accounting  for  the  origin  of  certain  rocks  near  the  Dead  Sea 
curiously  resembling  salt  formations.  This  in  effect  ran  as 
follows : 

"  Abraham,  the  friend  of  God,  having  come  here  one  day 
with  his  mule  to  buy  salt,  the  salt-workers  impudently  told 
him  that  they  had  no  salt  to  sell,  whereupon  the  patriarch 
said :  '  Your  words  are  true ;  you  have  no  salt  to  sell,'  and 
instantly  the  salt  of  this  whole  region  was  transformed  into 
stone,  or  rather  into  a  salt  which  has  lost  its  savour." 

Nothing  could  be  more  sure  than  this  story  to  throw 
light  into  the  mental  and  moral  process  by  which  the  salt 
pillar  myth  was  originally  created. 

In  the  years  1864  and  1865  came  an  expedition  on  a  much 
more  imposing  scale :  that  of  the  Due  de  Luynes.  His 
knowledge  of  archaeology  and  his  wealth  were  freely  de- 
voted to  working  the  mine  which  Lynch  had  opened,  and, 
taking  with  him  an  iron  vessel  and  several  savants,  he  de- 
voted himself  especially  to  finding  the  cities  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  and  to  giving  less  vague  accounts  of  them  than  those  of 
De  Saulcy.  But  he  was  disappointed,  and  honest  enough  to 
confess  his  disappointment.  So  vanished  one  of  the  most 
cherished  parts  of  the  legend. 

But  worse  remained  behind.  In  the  orthodox  duke's 
company  was  an  acute  geologist,  Monsieur  Lartet,  who  in 
due  time  made  an  elaborate  report,  which  let  a  flood  of  light 
into  the  whole  region. 

The  Abbe  Richard  had  been  rejoicing  the  orthodox  heart 
of  France  by  exhibiting  some  prehistoric  flint  implements  as 
the  knives  which  Joshua  had  made  for  circumcision.  By  a 
truthful  statement  Monsieur  Lartet  set  all  France  laughing 
at  the  Abbe,  and  then  turned  to  the  geology  of  the  Dead 
Sea  basin.  While  he  conceded  that  man  may  have  seen 
some  volcanic  crisis  there,  and  may  have  preserved  a  vivid 
remembrance   of  the   vapour  then   rising,   his   whole  argu- 


254  DEAD   SEA    LEGENDS    TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

ment  showed  irresistibly  that  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
region  are  due  to  natural  causes,  and  that,  so  far  from 
a  sudden  rising  of  the  lake  above  the  valley  within  historic 
times,  it  has  been  for  ages  steadilv  subsiding. 

Since  Balaam  was  called  by  Balak  to  curse  his  enemies, 
and  "  blessed  them  altogether,"  there  has  never  been  a  more 
unexpected  tribute  to  truth. 

Even  the  salt  pillar  at  Usdum,  as  depicted  in  Lynch's 
book,  aided  to  undermine  the  myth  among  thinking  men  ; 
for  the  background  of  the  picture  showed  other  pillars 
of  salt  in  process  of  formation  ;  and  the  ultimate  result  of  all 
these  expeditions  was  to  spread  an  atmosphere  in  which 
myth  and  legend  became  more  and  more  attenuated. 

To  sum  up  the  main  points  in  this  work  of  the  nineteenth 
century:  Seetzen,  Robinson,  and  others  had  found  that  a 
human  being  could  traverse  the  lake  without  being  killed  bv 
hellish  smoke  ;  that  the  waters  gave  forth  no  odours ;  that 
the  fruits  of  the  region  were  not  created  full  of  cinders  to 
match  the  desolation  of  the  Dead  Sea.  but  were  growths  not 
uncommon  in  Asia  Minor  and  elsewhere  ;  in  fact,  that  all  the 
phenomena  were  due  to  natural  causes. 

Ritter  and  others  had  shown  that  all  noted  features  of  the 
Dead  Sea  and  the  surrounding  country  were  to  be  found  in 
various  other  lakes  and  regions,  to  which  no  supernatural 
cause  was  ascribed  among  enlightened  men.  Lvnch.  Van 
de  Velde,  Osborne,  and  others  had  revealed  the  fact  that 
the  "  pillar  of  salt  "  was  frequently  formed  anew  bv  the  rains  ; 
and  Lartet  and  other  geologists  had  given  a  final  blow  to  the 
myths  by  making  it  clear  from  the  markings  on  the  neigh- 
bouring rocks  that,  instead  of  a  sudden  upheaval  of  the  sea 
above  the  valley  of  Siddim,  there  had  been  a  gradual  sub- 
sidence for  ages.* 

*  For  Seetzen,  see  his  Reisen,  edited  by  Kruse,  Berlin,  iS54-'5g ;  for  the  "  Dead 
Sea  Fruits,"  vol.  ii,  pp.  231  et  seq.  ;  for  the  appearance  of  the  sea,  etc.,  p.  243,  and 
elsewhere  :  for  the  Arab  explanatory  transformation  legends,  vol.  iii,  pp.  7,  14,  17. 
As  to  similarity  of  the  "  pillars  of  salt  "  to  columns  washed  out  by  rains  elsewhere, 
see  Kruse's  commentary  in  vol.  iv,  p.  240 ;  also  Fallmerayer,  vol.  i,  p.  197.  For 
Irby  and  Mangles,  see  work  already  cited.  For  Robinson,  see  his  I 
searches,  London,  1S41  ;  also  his  Later  Biblical  Researches,  London,  1S56.  For 
Lynch,  see  his  Narrative,  London,  1S49.  For  Gratz,  see  his  Scr.  .-■-'-.-  Hey  '.. 
Schrift,  pp.  1S6,  1S7.      For  De  Saulcy,  see  his  Voyage  auiour  de  la  Mer  .'.' 


BEGINNINGS   OF  SCEPTICISM 

Even  before  all  this  evidence  was  in,  a  judicial  dec:- 
had  been  pronounced  upon  the  whole  question  by  an  author- 
:  istian  and  scientific,  from  whom  there  could  be 
no  appeal.     During  the  second  quarter  of  the  centurv  Prof. 
Carl  Ri::er.  of  the  University  c  :  .  began  giving  to  the 

world  th  researches  which  have  placed  him  at  the  head 
of  all  geographers  ancient  or  modern,  and  finally  he  brought 
together  those  relating  to  the  geography  of  the  H  j\y  Land, 
publishing  them  as  part  of  his  gre  on  the  physical 

geography  of  the  earth.     1 1  and  nothing 

could  be  more  reverent  than  his  treatment  of  the  whole 
ject :  but  his  German  h  d  not  permit     im  to  conceal 

the  truth,  and  he  simply  classed  together  all  the  stori 
the  Dead  Sea — old  and  new — no  matter  where  found,  whether 
-acred  books  of  Jews,  Chris'  Mohammedans, 

:her  in  lives  of  saints  or  accounts  ..     :hs"' 

and  "sag 

From  this  decision  there  has  never  been  among  intelli- 
gent men  any  appeal. 

The  recent  adjustment  of  orthodox  thought  to  the  scien- 
the  Dead  Sea  legends  preser.- 
features.     As  t    pica!  we  may  take  the  travels  of  two  German 
let  ween  i860  and  1870 — J    hn  K  tor  in 

ich,  and  Pt:er  Schegg  r  in  the  u: 

of  that  c 

The  archdiocese     :   Muni  _ 

which  the  attempt  to  suppress  modern  scientific  thought  has 
been  m  vied  on.     Its  archbishops  have  con- 

stantly shown  themselves  assiduous  in  securing  cardinals' 
hats  ting      iencear.  g  education, 

twin  towers  of  the  old  cathedral  of  Munich  have  seemed  to 
throw  a  killing  shadow  over  intellectual  development  in  that 

Paris    :•■-:    especially  toL  i.  -    :-::     -  i  his  journal  of  the  earfy  month 

comparing  with  it  his  work  -  publishe  : 

tkiqtu  CatkoGqiu  <U  Voyages  it  de  Romans,  voL  i,  pp.  '  let,  see  his 

papas  read  before  the  Geographical  Socle:  iitations  in  Robinson  ; 

3Te  all,  his  elaborate  reports  which  form  the  greater  part  of  the  second  and 
third  volumes  of  the  monumental  work  which  bears   the  name  of  De   L  i 
already  cited.     For  exposures  of  De  Sanlcy*s  credulity  and   errors,  see  V. 

- 
De  Luynes,  psssim . 


256 


DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS    TO   COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY. 


region.  Naturally,  then,  these  two  clerical  travellers  from 
that  diocese  did  not  commit  themselves  to  clearing  away  any 
of  the  Dead  Sea  myths ;  but  it  is  significant  that  neither  of 
them  follows  the  example  of  so  many  of  their  clerical  prede- 
cessors in  defending  the  salt-pillar  legend :  they  steadily 
avoid  it  altogether. 

The  more  recent  history  of  the  salt  pillar,  since  Lynch, 
deserves  mention.  It  appears  that  the  travellers  immedi- 
ately after  him  found  it  shaped  by  the  storms  into  a  spire ; 
that  a  year  or  two  later  it  had  utterly  disappeared  ;  and 
about  the  year  1870  Prof.  Palmer,  on  visiting  the  place,  found 
at  some  distance  from  the  main  salt  bed,  as  he  says,  "a  tall, 
isolated  needle  of  rock,  which  does  really  bear  a  curious 
resemblance  to  an  Arab  woman  with  a  child  upon  her 
shoulders." 

And,  finally,  Smith's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  the  standard 
work  of  reference  for  English-speaking  scholars,  makes  its 
concession  to  the  old  belief  regarding  Sodom  and  Gomorrah 
as  slight  as  possible,  and  the  myth  of  Lot's  wife  entirely  dis- 
appears. 

IV.    THEOLOGICAL   EFFORTS   AT    COMPROMISE.— TRIUMPH    OF 
THE   SCIENTIFIC   VIEW. 

The  theological  effort  to  compromise  with  science  now 
came  in  more  strongly  than  ever.  This  effort  had  been 
made  long  before:  as  we  have  seen,  it  had  begun  to  show 
itself  decidedly  as  soon  as  the  influence  of  the  Baconian  phi- 
losophy was  felt.  Le  Clerc  suggested  that  the  shock  caused 
by  the  sight  of  fire  from  heaven  killed  Lot's  wife  instantly 
and  made  her  body  rigid  as  a  statue.  Eichhorn  suggested 
that  she  fell  into  a  stream  of  melted  bitumen.  Michaelis 
suggested  that  her  relatives  raised  a  monument  of  salt  rock 
to  her  memory.  Friedrichs  suggested  that  she  fell  into  the 
sea  and  that  the  salt  stiffened  around  her  clothing,  thus  mak- 
ing a  statue  of  her.  Some  claimed  that  a  shower  of  sulphur 
came  down  upon  her,  and  that  the  word  which  has  been  trans- 
lated "  salt "  could  possibly  be  translated  "  sulphur."  Others 
hinted  that  the  salt  by  its  antiseptic  qualities  preserved  her 
body  as  a  mummy.  De  Saulcy,  as  we  have  seen,  thought 
that  a  piece  of  salt  rock  fell  upon  her;  and  very  recently 


THEOLOGICAL   EFFORTS   AT   COMPROMISE.  257 

Principal  Dawson  has  ventured  the  explanation  that  a  flood 
of  salt  mud  coming  from  a  volcano  incrusted  her. 

But  theologians  themselves  were  the  first  to  show  the 
inadequacy  of  these  explanations.  The  more  rationalistic 
pointed  out  the  fact  that  they  were  contrary  to  the  sacred 
text :  Von  Bohlen,  an  eminent  professor  at  Konigsberg,  in 
his  sturdy  German  honesty,  declared  that  the  salt  pillar 
gave  rise  to  the  story,  and  compared  the  pillar  of  salt 
causing  this  transformation  legend  to  the  rock  in  Greek 
mythology  which  gave  rise  to  the  transformation  legend 
of  Niobe. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  more  severely  orthodox  protested 
against  such  attempts  to  explain  away  the  clear  statements 
of  Holy  Writ.  Dom  Calmet,  while  presenting  many  of 
these  explanations  made  as  early  as  his  time,  gives  us  to 
understand  that  nearly  all  theologians  adhered  to  the  idea 
that  Lot's  wife  was  instantly  and  really  changed  into  salt ; 
and  in  our  own  time,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  have  come 
some  very  vigorous  protests. 

Similar  attempts  were  made  to  explain  the  other  ancient 
legends  regarding  the  Dead  Sea.  One  of  the  most  recent 
of  these  is  that  the  cities  of  the  plain,  having  been  built  with 
blocks  of  bituminous  rock,  were  set  on  fire  by  lightning,  a 
contemporary  earthquake  helping  on  the  work.  Still  an- 
other is  that  accumulations  of  petroleum  and  inflammable 
gas  escaped  through  a  fissure,  took  fire,  and  so  produced 
the  catastrophe.* 

The  revolt  against  such  efforts  to  reconcile  scientific  fact 
with  myth  and  legend  had  become  very  evident  about  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  185 1  and  1852  Van  de 
Velde  made  his  journey.  He  was  a  most  devout  man, 
but  he  confessed  that  the  volcanic  action  at  the  Dead  Sea 
must  have  been  far  earlier  than  the  catastrophe  mentioned 
in  our  sacred  books,  and  that  "  the  overthrow  of  Sodom  and 

*  For  Kranzel,  see  his  Reise  nac/i  Jerusalem,  etc.  For  Schegg,  see  his  Gedenk- 
buch  einer  Pilger reise,  etc.,  1867,  chap.  xxiv.  For  Palmer,  see  his  Desert  of  the 
Exodus,  vol.  ii,  pp.  478,  479.  For  the  various  compromises,  see  works  already 
cited,  passim.  For  Von  Bohlen,  see  his  Genesis,  Konigsberg,  1835,  pp.  200-213. 
For  Calmet,  see  his  Dictionarium,  etc.,  Venet.,  1766.  For  very  recent  compro- 
mises, see  J.  W.  Dawson  and  Dr.  Cunningham  Geikie  in  works  cited. 
45 


258  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

Gomorrah  had  nothing  to  do  with  this."  A  few  years  later 
an  eminent  dignitary  of  the  English  Church,  Canon  Tris- 
tram, doctor  of  divinity  and  fellow  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety, who  had  explored  the  Holy  Land  thoroughly,  after 
some  generalities  about  miracles,  gave  up  the  whole  attempt 
to  make  science  agree  with  the  myths,  and  used  these  words  : 
"  It  has  been  frequently  assumed  that  the  district  of  Usdum 
and  its  sister  cities  was  the  result  of  some  tremendous  g-eo- 
logical  catastrophe.  .  .  .  Now,  careful  examination  by  com- 
petent geologists,  such  as  Monsieur  Lartet  and  others,  has 
shown  that  the  whole  district  has  assumed  its  present  shape 
slowly  and  gradually  through  a  succession  of  ages,  and  that 
its  peculiar  phenomena  are  similar  to  those  of  other  lakes." 
So  sank  from  view  the  whole  mass  of  Dead  Sea  myths  and 
legends,  and  science  gained  a  victory  both  for  geology  and 
comparative  mythology. 

As  a  protest  against  this  sort  of  rationalism  appeared  in 
1876  an  edition  of  Monseigneur  Mislin's  work  on  The  Holy 
Places.  In  order  to  give  weight  to  the  book,  it  was  prefaced 
by  letters  from  Pope  Pius  IX  and  sundry  high  ecclesiastics 
— and  from  Alexandre  Dumas!  His  hatred  of  Protestant 
missionaries  in  the  East  is  phenomenal :  he  calls  them  "  bag- 
men," ascribes  all  mischief  and  infamy  to  them,  and  his 
hatred  is  only  exceeded  by  his  credulity.  He  cites  all  the 
arguments  in  favour  of  the  salt  statue  at  Usdum  as  the  iden- 
tical one  into  which  Lot's  wife  was  changed,  adds  some  of 
his  own,  and  presents  her  as  "a  type  of  doubt  and  heresy." 
With  the  proverbial  facility  of  dogmatists  in  translating  any 
word  of  a  dead  language  into  anything  that  suits  their  pur- 
pose, he  says  that  the  word  in  the  nineteenth  chapter  of 
Genesis  which  is  translated  "  statue  "  or  "  pillar,"  may  be 
translated  "eternal  monument";  he  is  especially  severe  on 
poor  Monsieur  De  Saulcy  for  thinking  that  Lot's  wife  was 
killed  by  the  falling  of  a  piece  of  salt  rock  ;  and  he  actually 
boasts  that  it  was  he  who  caused  De  Saulcy,  a  member  of 
the  French  Institute,  to  suppress  the  obnoxious  passage  in  a 
later  edition. 

Between  1870  and  1880  came  two  killing  blows  at  the 
older  theories,  and  they  were  dealt  by  two  American  scholars 
of  the  highest  character.     First  of  these  may  be  mentioned 


THEOLOGICAL   EFFORTS   AT    COMPROMISE. 


259 


Dr.  Philip  Schaff,  a  professor  in  the  Presbyterian  Then- 
logical  Seminary  at  New  York,  who  published  his  travels 
in  1877.  1°  a  high  degree  he  united  the  scientific  with  the 
religious  spirit,  but  the  trait  which  made  him  especially  fit 
for  dealing  with  this  subject  was  his  straightforward  Ger- 
man honesty.  He  tells  the  simple  truth  regarding  the  pillar 
of  salt,  so  far  as  its  physical  origin  and  characteristics  are 
concerned,  and  leaves  his  reader  to  draw  the  natural  infer- 
ence as  to  its  relation  to  the  myth.  With  the  fate  of  Dr. 
Robertson  Smith  in  Scotland  and  Dr.  Woodrow  in  South 
Carolina  before  him — both  recently  driven  from  their  pro- 
fessorships for  truth-telling — Dr.  Schaff  deserves  honour  for 
telling  as  much  as  he  does. 

Similar  in  effect,  and  even  more  bold  in  statement,  were 
the  travels  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Osborn,  published  in  1878. 
In  a  truly  scientific  spirit  he  calls  attention  to  the  similarity 
of  the  Dead  Sea,  with  the  river  Jordan,  to  sundry  other 
lake  and  river  systems;  points  out  the  endless  variations 
between  writers  describing  the  salt  formations  at  Usdum  ; 
accounts  rationally  for  these  variations,  and  quotes  from 
Dr.  Anderson's  report,  saying,  "  From  the  soluble  nature 
of  the  salt  and  the  crumbling  looseness  of  the  marl,  it 
may  well  be  imagined  that,  while  some  of  these  needles 
are  in  the  process  of  formation,  others  are  being  washed 
away." 

Thus  came  out,  little  by  little,  the  truth  regarding  the 
Dead  Sea  myths,  and  especially  the  salt  pillar  at  Usdum  ; 
but  the  final  truth  remained  to  be  told  in  the  Church,  and 
now  one  of  the  purest  men  and  truest  divines  of  this  century 
told  it.  Arthur  Stanley,  Dean  of  Westminster,  visiting  the 
country  and  thoroughly  exploring  it,  allowed  that  the  phys- 
ical features  of  the  Dead  Sea  and  its  shores  suggested  the 
myths  and  legends,  and  he  sums  up  the  whole  as  follows: 
"  A  great  mass  of  legends  and  exaggerations,  partly  the 
cause  and  partly  the  result  of  the  old  belief  that  the  cities 
were  buried  under  the  Dead  Sea,  has  been  gradually  removed 
in  recent  years." 

So,  too,  about  the  same  time,  Dr.  Conrad  Furrer,  pastor 
of  the  great  church  of  St.  Peter  at  Zurich,  gave  to  the  world 
a  book  of  travels,  reverent  and  thoughtful,  and  in  this  hon- 


26o  DEAD    SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

estly  acknowledged  that  the  needles  of  salt  at  the  southern 
end  of  the  Dead  Sea  "  in  primitive  times  gave  rise  to  the 
tradition  that  Lot's  wife  was  transformed  into  a  statue  of 
salt."  Thus  was  the  mythical  character  of  this  story  at  last 
openly  confessed  by  leading  churchmen  on  both  continents. 

Plain  statements  like  these  from  such  sources  left  the 
high  theological  position  more  difficult  than  ever,  and  now 
a  new  compromise  was  attempted.  As  the  Siberian  mother 
tried  to  save  her  best-beloved  child  from  the  pursuing  wolves 
by  throwing  over  to  them  her  less  favoured  children,  so  an 
effort  was  now  made  in  a  leading  commentary  to  save  the 
legends  of  the  valley  of  Siddim  and  the  miraculous  destruc- 
tion of  the  cities  by  throwing  overboard  the  legend  of  Lot's 
wife.* 

An  amusing  result  has  followed  this  development  of  opin- 
ion. As  we  have  already  seen,  traveller  after  traveller,  Cath- 
olic and  Protestant,  now  visits  the  Dead  Sea,  and  hardly  one 
of  them  follows  the  New  Testament  injunction  to  "  remem- 
ber Lot's  wife."  Nearly  every  one  of  them  seems  to  think 
it  best  to  forget  her.  Of  the  great  mass  of  pious  legends 
they  are  shy  enough,  but  that  of  Lot's  wife,  as  a  rule,  they 
seem  never  to  have  heard  of,  and  if  they  do  allude  to  it 
they  simply  cover  the  whole  subject  with  a  haze  of  pious 
rhetoric. f 

Naturally,  under  this  state  of  things,  there  has  followed 
the  usual  attempt  to  throw  off  from  Christendom  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  old   belief,  and   in   1887  came  a  curious 

*  For  Mislin,  see  his  Les  Saints  Lietix,  Paris,  1876,  vol.  iii,  pp.  290-293,  espe- 
cially note  at  foot  of  page  292.  For  Schaff,  see  his  Through  Bible  Lands,  espe- 
cially chapter  xxix  ;  see  also  Rev.  H.  S.  Osborn,  M.  A.,  The  Holy  Land,  pp.  267  et 
sea.  ;  also  Stanley's  Sinai  and  Palestine,  London,  1887,  especially  pp.  290-293. 
For  Furrer,  see  his  En  Palestine,  Geneva,  1886,  vol.  i,  p.  246.  For  the  attempt  to 
save  one  legend  by  throwing  overboard  the  other,  see  Keil  and  Delitzsch,  Bi/li- 
scher  Commenta?  iiber  das  Alte  Testament,  vol.  i,  pp.  155.  !50-  For  Van  de  Velde, 
see  his  Syria  and  Palestine,  vol.  ii,  p.  120. 

f  The  only  notice  of  the  Lot's  wife  legend  in  the  editions  of  Robinson  at  my 
command  is  a  very  curious  one  by  Leopold  von  Buch,  the  eminent  geologist. 
Robinson,  with  a  fearlessness  which  does  him  credit,  consulted  Von  Buch,  who  in 
his  answer  was  evidently  inclined  to  make  things  easy  for  Robinson  by  hinting 
that  Lot  was  so  much  struck  with  the  salt  formations  that  he  imagined  that  his 
wife  had  been  changed  into  salt.  On  this  theory  Robinson  makes  no  comment, 
^ee  Robinson,  Biblical  Researches  in  Palestine,  etc.,  London,  1841,  vol.  ii,  p.  674. 


THEOLOGICAL   EFFORTS   AT   COMPROMISE.  26l 

effort  of  this  sort.  In  that  year  appeared  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Cunningham  Geikie's  valuable  work  on  The  Holy  Land  ami 
the  Bible.  In  it  he  makes  the  following  statement  as  to  the 
salt  formation  at  Usdum  :  "  Here  and  there,  hardened  por- 
tions of  salt  withstanding  the  water,  while  all  around  them 
melts  and  wears  off,  rise  up  isolated  pillars,  one  of  which 
bears  among  the  Arabs  the  name  of  '  Lot's  wife.'  " 

In  the  light  of  the  previous  history,  there  is  something 
at  once  pathetic  and  comical  in  this  attempt  to  throw  the 
myth  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  poor  Arabs.  The  myth 
was  not  originated  by  Mohammedans  ;  it  appears,  as  we  have 
seen,  first  among  the  Jews,  and,  I  need  hardly  remind  the 
reader,  comes  out  in  the  Book  of  Wisdom  and  in  Josephus, 
and  has  been  steadily  maintained  by  fathers,  martyrs,  and 
doctors  of  the  Church,  by  at  least  one  pope,  and  by  innumer- 
able bishops,  priests,  monks,  commentators,  and  travellers, 
Catholic  and  Protestant,  ever  since.  In  thus  throwing  the 
responsibility  of  the  myth  upon  the  Arabs  Dr.  Geikie  ap- 
pears to  show  both  the  "  perfervid  genius"  of  his  country- 
men and  their  incapacity  to  recognise  a  joke. 

Nor  is  he  more  happy  in  his  rationalistic  explanations  of 
the  whole  mass  of  myths.  He  supposes  a  terrific  storm,  in 
which  the  lightning  kindled  the  combustible  materials  of  the 
cities,  aided  perhaps  by  an  earthquake  ;  but  this  shows  a  dis- 
position to  break  away  from  the  exact  statements  of  the 
sacred  books  which  would  have  been  most  severely  con- 
demned by  the  universal  Church  during  at  least  eighteen 
hundred  years  of  its  history.  Nor  would  the  explanations 
of  Sir  William  Dawson  have  fared  any  better:  it.  is  very 
doubtful  whether  either  of  them  could  escape  unscathed  to- 
day from  a  synod  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland,  or  of  any 
of  the  leading  orthodox  bodies  in  the  Southern  States  of  the 
American  Union.* 

How  unsatisfactory  all  such  rationalism  must  be  to  a 
truly  theological  mind  is  seen  not  only  in  the  dealings  with 
Prof.  Robertson  Smith  in  Scotland  and  Prof.  Woodrow  in 


*  For  these  most  recent  explanations,  see   Rev.  Cunningham  Geikie,  D.  IX,  in 
work  cited  ;  also  Sir  J.  W.  Dawson,  Egypt  and  Syria,  published  by  the   Reli 
Tract  Society,  1887,  pp.  125,  126;  see  also  Dawson's  article  in  The  Expositor  foi 
January,  1886. 


262  DEAD   SEA   LEGENDS   TO   COMPARATIVE    MYTHOLOGY. 

South  Carolina,  but  most  clearly  in  a  book  published  in 
1886  by  Monseigneur  Haussraann  de  Wandelburg.  Among 
other  things,  the  author  was  Prelate  of  the  Pope's  House- 
hold, a  Mitred  Abbot,  Canon  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and  a 
Doctor  of  Theology  of  the  Pontifical  University  at  Rome, 
and  his  work  is  introduced  by  approving  letters  from  Pope 
Leo  XIII  and  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem.  Monseigneur  de 
Wandelburg  scorns  the  idea  that  the  salt  column  at  Usdum 
is  not  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife ;  he  points  out  not  only  the 
danger  of  yielding  this  evidence  of  miracle  to  rationalism, 
but  the  fact  that  the  divinely  inspired  authority  of  the  Book 
of  Wisdom,  written,  at  the  latest,  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
before  Christ,  distinctly  refers  to  it.  He  summons  Josephus 
as  a  witness.  He  dwells  on  the  fact  that  St.  Clement  of 
Rome,  Irenaeus,  Hegesippus,  and  St.  Cyril,  "  who  as  Bishop 
of  Jerusalem  must  have  known  better  than  any  other  person 
what  existed  in  Palestine,"  with  St.  Jerome,  St.  Chrysostom, 
and  a  multitude  of  others,  attest,  as  a  matter  of  their  own 
knowledge  or  of  popular  notoriety,  that  the  remains  of 
Lot's  wife  really  existed  in  their  time  in  the  form  of  a  col- 
umn of  salt ;  and  he  points  triumphantly  to  the  fact  that 
Lieutenant  Lynch  found  this  very  column. 

In  the  presence  of  such  a  continuous  line  of  witnesses, 
some  of  them  considered  as  divinely  inspired,,  and  all  of 
them  greatly  revered — a  line  extending  through  thirty-seven 
hundred  years — he  condemns  most  vigorously  all  those  who 
do  not  believe  that  the  pillar  of  salt  now  at  Usdum  is  identi- 
cal with  the  wife  of  Lot,  and  stigmatizes  them  as  people  who 
"  do  not  wish  to  believe  the  truth  of  the  Word  of  God."  His 
ignorance  of  many  of  the  simplest  facts  bearing  upon  the 
legend  is  very  striking,  yet  he  does  not  hesitate  to  speak  of 
men  who  know  far  more  and  have  thought  far  more  upon 
the  subject  as  "  grossly  ignorant."  The  most  curious  fea- 
ture in  his  ignorance  is  the  fact  that  he  is  utterly  unaware  of 
the  annual  changes  in  the  salt  statue.  He  is  entirely  igno- 
rant of  such  facts  as  that  the  priest  Gabriel  Giraudet  in  the 
sixteenth  century  found  the  statue  lying  down  ;  that  the 
monk  Z winner  found  it  in  the  seventeenth  century  standing, 
and  accompanied  by  a  dog  also  transformed  into  salt;  that 
Prince  Radziwill  found  no  statue  at  all ;  that  the  pious  Vin- 


TRIUMPH    OF   THE   SCIENTIFIC   VIEW.  263 

cent  Briemle  in  the  eighteenth  century  found  the  monument 
renewing  itself ;  that  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Lynch  found  it  in  the  shape  of  a  tower  or  column  forty 
feet  high  ;  that  within  two  years  afterward  De  Saulcy  found 
it  washed  into  the  form  of  a  spire ;  that  a  year  later  Van  de 
Velde  found  it  utterly  washed  away  ;  and  that  a  few  years 
later  Palmer  found  it  "  a  statue  bearing  a  striking  resemblance 
to  an  Arab  woman  with  a  child  in  her  arms."  So  ended  the 
last  great  demonstration,  thus  far,  on  the  side  of  sacred  sci- 
ence— the  last  retreating  shot  from  the  theological  rearguard. 

It  is  but  just  to  say  that  a  very  great  share  in  the  honour 
of  the  victory  of  science  in  this  field  is  due  to  men  trained 
as  theologians.  It  would  naturally  be  so,  since  few  others 
have  devoted  themselves  to  direct  labour  in  it ;  yet  great 
honour  is  none  the  less  due  to  such  men  as  Reland,  Mariti, 
Smith,  Robinson,  Stanley,  Tristram,  and  Schaff. 

They  have  rendered  even  a  greater  service  to  religion 
than  to  science,  for  they  have  made  a  beginning,  at  least,  of 
doing  away  with  that  enforced  belief  in  myths  as  history 
which  has  become  a  most  serious  danger  to  Christianity. 

For  the  worst  enemy  of  Christianity  could  wish  nothing 
more  than  that  its  main  leaders  should  prove  that  it  can  not 
be  adopted  save  by  those  who  accept,  as  historical,  state- 
ments which  unbiased  men  throughout  the  world  know  to 
be  mythical.  The  result  of  such  a  demonstration  would 
only  be  more  and  more  to  make  thinking  people  inside  the 
Church  dissemblers,  and  thinking  people  outside,  scoffers. 

Far  better  is  it  to  welcome  the  aid  of  science,  in  the  con- 
viction that  all  truth  is  one,  and,  in  the  light  of  this  truth,  to 
allow  theology  and  science  to  work  together  in  the  steady 
evolution  of  religion  and  morality. 

The  revelations  made  by  the  sciences  which  most  di- 
rectly deal  with  the  history  of  man  all  converge  in  the  truth 
that  during  the  earlier  stages  of  this  evolution  moral  and 
spiritual  teachings  must  be  inclosed  in  myth,  legend,  and 
parable.  "  The  Master"  felt  this  when  he  gave  to  the  poor 
peasants  about  him,  and  so  to  the  world,  his  simple  and 
beautiful  illustrations.  In  making  this  truth  clear,  science 
will  give  to  religion  far  more  than  it  will  take  away,  for  it 
will  throw  new  life  and  light  into  all  sacred  literature. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 
FROM  LEVITICUS    TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

I.   ORIGIN   AND    PROGRESS   OF    HOSTILITY    TO   LOANS 
AT    INTEREST. 

Among  questions  on  which  the  supporters  of  right  rea- 
son in  political  and  social  science  have  only  conquered  theo- 
logical opposition  after  centuries  of  war,  is  the  taking  of 
interest  on  loans.  In  hardly  any  struggle  has  rigid  adher- 
ence to  the  letter  of  our  sacred  books  been  more  prolonged 
and  injurious. 

Certainly,  if  the  criterion  of  truth,  as  regards  any  doc- 
trine, be  that  of  St.  Vincent  of  Lerins — that  it  has  been  held 
in  the  Church  "always,  everywhere,  and  by  all" — then  on 
no  point  may  a  Christian  of  these  days  be  more  sure  than 
that  every  savings  institution,  every  loan  and  trust  company, 
every  bank,  every  loan  of  capital  by  an  individual,  every 
means  by  which  accumulated  capital  has  been  lawfully  lent 
even  at  the  most  moderate  interest,  to  make  men  workers 
rather  than  paupers,  is  based  on  deadly  sin. 

The  early  evolution  of  the  belief  that  taking  interest  for 
money  is  sinful  presents  a  curious  working  together  of  meta- 
physical, theological,  and  humanitarian  ideas. 

In  the  main  centre  of  ancient  Greek  civilization,  the 
loaning  of  money  at  interest  came  to  be  accepted  at  an  early 
period  as  a  condition  of  productive  industry,  and  no  legal 
restriction  was  imposed.  In  Rome  there  was  a  long  process 
of  development :  the  greed  of  creditors  in  early  times  led 
to  laws  against  the  taking  of  interest ;  but,  though  these 
lasted  long,  that  strong  practical  sense  which  gave  Rome 
the  empire  of  the  world  substituted  finally,  for  this  absolute 
prohibition,  the  establishment  of  rates  by  law.     Yet  many 

364 


HOSTILITY   TO   LOANS   AT    INTEREST.  265 

of  the  leading  Greek  and  Roman  thinkers  opposed  this 
practical  settlement  of  the  question,  and,  foremost  of  all, 
Aristotle.  In  a  metaphysical  way  he  declared  that  money 
is  by  nature  "  barren  "  ;  that  the  birth  of  money  from  money 
is  therefore  "  unnatural "  ;  and  hence  that  the  taking  of  in- 
terest is  to  be  censured  and  hated.  Plato,  Plutarch,  both 
the  Catos,  Cicero,  Seneca,  and  various  other  leaders  of  an- 
cient thought,  arrived  at  much  the  same  conclusion — some- 
times from  sympathy  with  oppressed  debtors  ;  sometimes 
from  dislike  of  usurers  ;  sometimes  from  simple  contempt 
of  trade. 

From  these  sources  there  came  into  the  early  Church  the 
germ  of  a  theological  theory  upon  the  subject. 

But  far  greater  was  the  stream  of  influence  from  the 
Jewish  and  Christian  sacred  books.  In  the  Old  Testament 
stood  various  texts  condemning  usury — the  term  usury  mean- 
ing any  taking  of  interest :  the  law  of  Moses,  while  it  allowed 
usury  in  dealing  with  strangers,  forbade  it  in  dealing  with 
Jews.  In  the  New  Testament,  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
as  given  by  St.  Luke,  stood  the  text  "  Lend,  hoping  for 
nothing  again."  These  texts  seemed  to  harmonize  with  the 
most  beautiful  characteristic  of  primitive  Christianity;  its 
tender  care  for  the  poor  and  oppressed  :  hence  we  find, 
from  the  earliest  period,  the  whole  weight  of  the  Church 
brought  to  bear  against  the  taking  of  interest  for  money.* 

The  great  fathers  of  the  Eastern  Church,  and  among 
them  St.  Basil,  St.  Chrysostom,  and  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa, — 

*  On  the  general  allowance  of  interest  for  money  in  Greece,  even  at  high  rates, 
see  Bockh,  Public  Economy  of  the  Athenians,  translated  by  Lamb,  Boston,  1S57, 
especially  chaps,  xxii,  xxiii,  and  xxiv  of  book  i.  For  view  of  usury  taken  by  Aris- 
totle, see  his  Politics  and  Economics,  translated  by  Walford,  p.  27  ;  also  Grote, 
History  of  Greece,  vol.  iii,  chap.  xi.  For  summary  of  opinions  in  Greece  and  Rome, 
and  their  relation  to  Christian  thought,  see  BiJhm-Bawerk,  Capital  ami  Interest, 
translated  by  Smart,  London,  1890,  chap.  i.  For  a  very  full  list  of  Scripture  texts 
against  the  taking  of  interest,  see  Pearson,  The  Theories  on  Usury  in  Europe, 
1 100-1400,  Cambridge  (England),  1876,  p.  6.  The  texts  most  frequently  cited 
were  Leviticus  xxv,  36,  37  ;  Deuteronomy  xxiii,  iq  and  26  ;  Psalms  xv,  5  ;  Eze- 
kiel  xviii,  8  and  17  ;  St.  Luke  vi,  35.  For  a  curious  modern  use  of  them,  see 
D.  S.  Dickinson's  speech  in  the  Senate  of  New  York,  in  vol.  i  of  his  collected  writ- 
ings. See  also  Lecky,  History  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii,  chap,  vi  ;  and 
above  all,  as  the  most  recent  historical  summary  by  a  leading  historian  of  political 
economy,  Bohm-Bawerk  as  above. 


265  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

the  fathers  of  the  Western  Church,  and  among  them  Tertul- 
lian,  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Augustine,  and  St.  Jerome,  joined 
most  earnestly  in  this  condemnation.  St.  Basil  denounces 
money  at  interest  as  a  "  fecund  monster,"  and  says,  "  The 
divine  law  declares  expressly,  '  Thou  shalt  not  lend  on  usury 
to  thy  brother  or  thy  neighbour.'  "  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa 
calls  down  on  him  who  lends  money  at  interest  the  venge- 
ance of  the  Almighty.  St.  Chrysostom  says:  "What  can 
be  more  unreasonable  than  to  sow  without  land,  without 
rain,  without  ploughs?  All  those  who  give  themselves  up 
to  this  damnable  culture  shall  reap  only  tares.  Let  us  cut  off 
these  monstrous  births  of  gold  and  silver ;  let  us  stop  this 
execrable  fecundity."  Lactantius  called  the  taking  of  in- 
terest "  robber}7."  St.  Ambrose  declared  it  as  bad  as  mur- 
der. St.  Jerome  threw  the  argument  into  the  form  of  a 
dilemma,  which  was  used  as  a  weapon  against  money-lenders 
for  centuries.  Pope  Leo  the  Great  solemnly  adjudged  it 
a  sin  worthy  of  severe  punishment.* 

This  unanimity  of  the  fathers  of  the  Church  brought 
about  a  crystallization  of  hostility  to  interest-bearing  loans 
into  numberless  decrees  of  popes  and  councils  and  kings  and 
legislatures  throughout  Christendom  during  more  than  fif- 
teen hundred  years,  and  the  canon  law  was  shaped  in  ac- 
cordance with  these.  At  first  these  were  more  especially 
directed  against  the  clergy,  but  we  soon  find  them  extending 
to  the  laity.  These  prohibitions  were  enforced  by  the  Coun- 
cil of  Aries  in  314,  and  a  modern  Church  apologist  insists 
that  every  great  assembly  of  the  Church,  from  the  Council 

*  For  St.  Basil  and  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  see  French  translation  of  their  dia- 
tribes in  Homilies  contre  les  Usuriers,  Paris,  Hachette,  1861-62,  especially  p.  30 
of  St.  Basil.  For  some  doubtful  reservations  by  St.  Augustine,  see  Murray,  His- 
tory of  Usury.  For  St.  Ambrose,  see  the  De  Officiis,  lib.  iii,  cap.  ii,  in  Migne, 
Pair.  Lat.,  vol.  xvi ;  also  the  De  labia,  in  Migne,  vol.  xiv.  For  St.  Augustine, 
see  De  Bapt.  contra  Donat.,  lib.  iv,  cap.  ix,  in  Migne,  vol.  xliii.  For  Lactantius, 
see  his  Opera,  Leyden,  1660,  p.  608.  For  Cyprian,  see  his  Testimonies  against 
the  fezus,  translated  by  Wallis,  book  iii,  article  48.  For  St.  Jerome,  see  his  Com. 
in  Ezekiel,  xviii,  S,  in  Migne,  vol.  xxv,  pp.  170  et  sea.  For  Leo  the  Great,  see  his 
letter  to  the  bishops  of  various  provinces  of  Italy,  cited  in  the  Jus  Can.,  cap.  vii,  can. 
xiv,  qu.  4.  For  very  fair  statements  of  the  attitude  of  the  fathers  on  this  question, 
see  Addis  and  Arnold,  Catholic  Dictionary,  London,  1884,  and  Smith  and  Cheet- 
ham,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities,  London,  iS75-'8o  ;  in  each,  under  article 
Usury. 


HOSTILITY   TO    LOANS   AT    INTEREST 


267 


of  Elvira  in  306  to  that  of  Vicnnc  in  131 1,  inclusive,  solemnly 
condemned  lending  money  at  interest.  The  greatest  rulers 
under  the  sway  of  the  Church — Justinian,  in  the  Empire  of 
the  East;  Charlemagne,  in  the  Empire  of  the  West;  Alfred, 
in  England  ;  St.  Louis,  in  France — yielded  fully  to  this  dog- 
ma. In  the  ninth  century  Alfred  went  so  far  as  to  confiscate 
the  estates  of  money-lenders,  denying  them  burial  in  conse- 
crated ground ;  and  similar  decrees  were  made  in  other 
parts  of  Europe.  In  the  twelfth  century  the  Greek  Church 
seems  to  have  relaxed  its  strictness  somewhat,  but  the 
Roman  Church  grew  more  severe.  St.  Anselm  proved  from 
the  Scriptures  that  the  taking  of  interest  is  a  breach  of  the 
Ten  Commandments.  Peter  Lombard,  in  his  Sentences, 
made  the  taking  of  interest  purely  and  simply  theft.  St. 
Bernard,  reviving  religious  earnestness  in  the  Church, 
took  the  same  view.  In  1179  the  Third  Council  of  the 
Lateran  decreed  that  impenitent  money-lenders  should  be 
excluded  from  the  altar,  from  absolution  in  the  hour  of 
death,  and  from  Christian  burial.  Pope  Urban  III  reiter- 
ated the  declaration  that  the  passage  in  St.  Luke  forbade 
the  taking  of  any  interest  whatever.  Pope  Alexander  III 
declared  that  the  prohibition  in  this  matter  could  never  be 
suspended  by  dispensation. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  Pope  Gregory  IX  dealt  an  es- 
pecially severe  blow  at  commerce  by  his  declaration  that 
even  to  advance  on  interest  the  money  necessary  in  maritime 
trade  was  damnable  usury  ;  and  this  was  fitly  followed  by 
Gregory  X,  who  forbade  Christian  burial  to  those  guilty  of 
this  practice ;  the  Council  of  Lyons  meted  out  the  same  pen- 
alty. This  idea  was  still  more  firmly  fastened  upon  the 
world  by  the  two  greatest  thinkers  of  the  time :  first,  by  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  who  knit  it  into  the  mind  of  the  Church 
by  the  use  of  the  Scriptures  and  of  Aristotle ;  and  next  by 
Dante,  who  pictured  money-lenders  in  one  of  the  worst 
regions  of  hell. 

About  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  "  Sub- 
tile Doctor"  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Duns  Scotus,  gave  to  the 
world  an  exquisite  piece  of  reasoning  in  evasion  of  the 
accepted  doctrine  ;  but  all  to  no  purpose  :  the  Council  of  Vi- 
enne,  presided  over  by  Pope  Clement  V,  declared  that  if  any 


268  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

one  "shall  pertinaciously  presume  to  affirm  that  the  taking 
of  interest  for  money  is  not  a  sin,  we  decree  him  to  be  a  her- 
etic, fit  for  punishment."  This  infallible  utterance  bound 
the  dogma  with  additional  force  on  the  conscience  of  the 
universal  Church. 

Nor  was  this  a  doctrine  enforced  by  rulers  only  ;  the  peo- 
ple were  no  less  strenuous.  In  1390  the  city  authorities  of 
London  enacted  that,  "  if  any  person  shall  lend  or  put  into 
the  hands  of  any  person  gold  or  silver  to  receive  gain  there- 
by, such  person  shall  have  the  punishment  for  usurers." 
And  in  the  same  year  the  Commons  prayed  the  king  that 
the  laws  of  London  against  usury  might  have  the  force  of 
statutes  throughout  the  realm. 

In  the  fifteenth  century  the  Council  of  the  Church  at  Salz- 
burg excluded  from  communion  and  burial  any  who  took 
interest  for  money,  and  this  was  a  very  general  rule  through- 
out Germany. 

An  exception  was,  indeed,  sometimes  made :  some  canon- 
ists held  that  Jews  might  be  allowed  to  take  interest,  since 
they  were  to  be  damned  in  any  case,  and  their  monopoly  of 
money-lending  might  prevent  Christians  from  losing  their 
souls  by  going  into  the  business.  Yet  even  the  Jews  were' 
from  time  to  time  punished  for  the  crime  of  usury  ;  and,  as 
regards  Christians,  punishment  was  bestowed  on  the  dead 
as  well  as  the  living — the  bodies  of  dead  money-lenders  being 
here  and  there  dug  up  and  cast  out  of  consecrated  ground. 

The  popular  preachers  constantly  declaimed  against  all 
who  took  interest.  The  mediaeval  anecdote  books  for  pulpit 
use  are  especially  full  on  this  point.  Jacques  de  Vitry  tells 
us  that  demons  on  one  occasion  filled  a  dead  money-lender's 
mouth  with  red-hot  coins  ;  Cassarius  of  Heisterbach  declared 
that  a  toad  was  found  thrusting  a  piece  of  money  into  a  dead 
usurer's  heart ;  in  another  case,  a  devil  was  seen  pouring 
molten  gold  down  a  dead  money-lender's  throat.* 


*  For  an  enumeration  of  councils  condemning  the  taking  of  interest  for  money, 
see  Li6geois,  Essai  sur  VHistoire  et  la  Legislation  de  V  Usure,  Paris,  1865,  p.  78  ;  also 
the  Catholic  Dictionary  as  above.  For  curious  additional  details  and  sources  re- 
garding mediaeval  horror  of  usurers,  see  Ducange,  Glossariu/n,  etc.,  article  Caor- 
cini.  The  date,  306,  for  the  Council  of  Elvira  is  that  assigned  by  Hefele.  For  the 
decree  of  Alexander  III,  see  citation  from  the  Latin  text  in  Lecky.     For  a  long 


HOSTILITY   TO   LOANS   AT    INTEREST. 


269 


This  theological  hostility  to  the  taking  of  interest  was 
imbedded  firmly  in  the  canon  law.  Again  and  again  it  de- 
fined usury  to  be  the  taking  of  anything  of  value  beyond  the 
exact  original  amount  of  a  loan  ;  and  under  sanction  of  the 
universal  Church  it  denounced  this  as  a  crime  and  declared 
all  persons  defending  it  to  be  guilty  of  heresy.  What  this 
meant  the  world  knows  but  too  well. 

The  whole  evolution  of  European  civilization  was  greatly 
hindered  by  this  conscientious  policy.  Money  could  only  be 
loaned  in  most  countries  at  the  risk  of  incurring  odium  in 
this  world  and  damnation  in  the  next;  hence  there  was  but 
little  capital  and  few  lenders.  The  rates  of  interest  became 
at  times  enormous  ;  as  high  as  forty  per  cent  in  England,  and 
ten  per  cent  a  month  in  Italy  and  Spain.  Commerce,  manu- 
factures, and  general  enterprise  were  dwarfed,  while  pau- 
perism flourished. 

catalogue  of  ecclesiastical  and  civil  decrees  against  taking  of  interest,  see  Petit, 
Trait/ de  V  Usure,  Paris,  1840.  For  the  reasoning  at  bottom  of  this,  see  Cunning- 
ham, Christian  Opinion  on  Usury,  London,  1884.  For  the  Salzburg  decrees,  see 
Zillner,  Salzbnrgische  Culturgeschichte,  p.  232  ;  and  for  Germany  generally,  see 
Neumann,  Ceschichte  des  Wuchers  in  Dcutschland,  Halle,  1865,  especially  pp.  22 
et  sea. ;  also  Roscher,  National-Oeconomie.  For  effect  of  mistranslation  of  the  pas- 
sage of  Luke  in  the  Vulgate,  see  Dollinger,  p.  170,  and  especially  pp.  224,  225. 
For  the  capitularies  of  Charlemagne  against  usury,  see  Liegeois,  p.  77.  For  Gregory 
X  and  the  Council  of  Lyons,  see  Sextus  Decretalium  Liber,  pp.  669  et  sea.  For 
Peter  Lombard,  see  his  Lib.  Sententiarum,  III,  dist.  xxxvii,  3.  For  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  see  his  works,  Migne,  vol.  iii,  Paris,  1889,  quasstio  78,  pp.  $%6etseq.,  citing 
the  Scriptures  and  Aristotle,  and  especially  developing  Aristotle's  metaphysical  idea 
regarding  the  "  barrenness"  of  money.  For  a  very  good  summary  of  St.  Thomas's 
ideas,  see  Pearson,  pp.  30  et  sea.  For  Dante,  see  in  canto  xi  of  the  Inferno  a  rev- 
elation of  the  amazing  depth  of  the  hostility  to  the  taking  of  interest.  For  the  Lon- 
don law  of  1390  and  the  petition  to  the  king,  see  Cunningham,  Growth  of  English 
Industry  and  Commerce,  pp.  210,  326  ;  also  the  Abridgment  of  the  Records  in  the 
Tower  of  London,  p.  339.  For  the  theory  that  Jews,  being  damned  already,  might 
be  allowed  to  practise  usury,  see  Liegeois,  Histoire  de  /'  [/sure,  p.  82.  For  St.  Ber- 
nard's view,  see  Epist.  CCCLXLLI,  in  Migne,  vol.  clxxxii,  p.  567.  For  ideas  and 
anecdotes  for  preachers'  use,  see  Joannes  a  San  Geminiano,  Summa  de  Exemplis, 
Antwerp,  1629,  fol.  493,  a  ;  also  the  edition  of  Venice,  1584,  ff.  132,  159  ;  but  es- 
pecially, for  multitudes  of  examples,  see  the  Exempla  of  Jacques  de  Vitry,  edited  by 
Prof.  T.  F.  Crane,  of  Cornell  University,  London,  1890,  pp.  203  et  seq.  For  the 
canon  law  in  relation  to  interest,  see  a  long  line  of  authorities  cited  in  Die  Wucher- 
frage,  St.  Louis,  1869,  pp.  92  et  seq.,  and  especially  Decret.  Gregor,,  lib.  v,  lit.  19 
cap.  iii,  and  Clementin.,  lib.  v,  lit.  5,  sec.  2  ;  see  also  the  Corpus  Juris  Canonici, 
Paris,  1618,  pp.  227,  228.  For  the  position  of  the  English  Church,  see  Gibson's 
Corpus  Juris  Ecclesiastici  Anglicani,  pp.  1070,  1071,  1106. 


270  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

Yet  worse  than  these  were  the  moral  results.  Doing 
what  one  holds  to  be  evil  is  only  second  in  bad  consequences 
to  doing  what  is  really  evil ;  hence,  all  lending  and  bor- 
rowing, even  for  the  most  legitimate  purposes  and  at  the 
most  reasonable  rates,  tended  to  debase  both  borrower  and 
lender.  The  prohibition  of  lending  at  interest  in  continen- 
tal Europe  promoted  luxury  and  discouraged  economy ; 
the  rich,  who  were  not  engaged  in  business,  finding  no 
easy  way  of  employing  their  incomes  productively,  spent 
them  largely  in  ostentation  and  riotous  living. 

One  evil  effect  is  felt  in  all  parts  of  the  world  to  this  hour. 
The  Jews,  so  acute  in  intellect  and  strong  in  will,  were  vir- 
tually drawn  or  driven  out  of  all  other  industries  or  profes- 
sions by  the  theory  that  their  race,  being  accursed,  was  only 
fitted  for  the  abhorred  profession  of  money-lending.* 

These  evils  were  so  manifest,  when  trade  began  to  revive 
throughout  Europe  in  the  fifteenth  century,  that  most  ear- 
nest exertions  were  put  forth  to  induce  the  Church  to  change 
its  position. 

The  first  important  effort  of  this  kind  was  made  by  John 
Gerson.  His  general  learning  made  him  Chancellor  of  the 
University  of  Paris ;  his  sacred  learning  made  him  the  lead- 
ing orator  at  the  Council  of  Constance  ;  his  piety  led  men  to 
attribute  to  him  The  Imitation  of  Christ.  Shaking  off  theo- 
logical shackles,  he  declared,  "  Better  is  it  to  lend  money  at 
reasonable  interest,  and  thus  to  give  aid  to  the  poor,  than  to 

*  For  evil  economic  results,  and  especially  for  the  rise  of  the  rate  of  interest  in 
England  and  elsewhere  at  times  to  forty  per  cent,  see  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Eng- 
lish Industry  and  Commerce,  Cambridge,  1890,  p.  189  ;  and  for  its  rising  to  ten  per 
cent  a  month,  see  Bexlarride,  Les  Juifs  en  France,  en  Italie,  et  en  Espagne,  p.  220  ; 
see  also  Hallam's  Middle  Ages,  London,  1853,  pp.  401,  402.  For  the  evil  moral 
effects  of  the  Church  doctrine  against  taking  interest,  see  Montesquieu,  Esprit  des 
Lois,  lib.  xxi,  chap,  xx  ;  see  also  Sismondi,  cited  in  Lecky.  For  the  trifling  with 
conscience,  distinction  between  "  consumptibles  "  and  "  fungibles,"  "  possessio  "  and 
"  dominium,"  etc.,  see  Ashley,  English  Economic  History,  New  York,  1888,  pp. 
152,  153  ;  see  also  Leopold  Delisle  Etudes,  pp.  198,  468.  For  effects  of  these 
doctrines  on  the  Jews,  see  Milman,  History  of  the  Jews,  vol.  iii,  p.  179  ;  also  Well- 
hausen,  History  of  Israel,  London,  1885,  p.  546  ;  also  Beugnot,  Les  Juifs  d' Occi- 
dent, Paris,  1824,  pt.  2.  p.  114  Con  driving  Jews  out  of  other  industries  than  money- 
lending).  For  a  noted  mediaeval  evasion  of  the  Church  rules  against  usury,  see 
Peruzzi,  Storia  del  Commercio  e  dei  Banchieri  di  Eirenze,  Florence,  1868,  pp.  172, 
173- 


HOSTILITY   TO   LOANS   AT    INTEREST. 


271 


see  them  reduced  by  poverty  to  steal,  waste  their  goods,  and 
sell  at  a  low  price  their  personal  and  real  property." 

But  this  idea  was  at  once  buried  beneath  citations  from 
the  Scriptures,  the  fathers,  councils,  popes,  and  the  canon 
law.  Even  in  the  most  active  countries  there  seemed  to  be 
no  hope.  In  England,  under  Henry  VII,  Cardinal  Morton, 
the  lord  chancellor,  addressed  Parliament,  asking  it  to  take 
into  consideration  loans  of  money  at  interest.  The  result 
was  a  law  which  imposed  on  lenders  at  interest  a  fine  of  a 
hundred  pounds  besides  the  annulment  of  the  loan  ;  and,  to 
show  that  there  was  an  offence  against  religion  involved, 
there  was  added  a  clause  "  reserving  to  the  Church,  notwith- 
standing this  punishment,  the  correction  of  their  souls  ac- 
cording to  the  laws  of  the  same." 

Similar  enactments  were  made  by  civil  authority  in  vari- 
ous parts  of  Europe  ;  and  just  when  the  trade,  commerce,  and 
manufactures  of  the  modern  epoch  had  received  an  immense 
impulse  from  the  great  series  of  voyages  of  discovery  by 
such  men  as  Columbus,  Vasco  da  Gama,  Magellan,  and  the 
Cabots,  this  barrier  against  enterprise  was  strengthened  by 
a  decree  from  no  less  enlightened  a  pontiff  than  Leo  X. 

The  popular  feeling  warranted  such  decrees.  As  late  as 
the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages  we  find  the  people  of  Piacenza 
dragging  the  body  of  a  money-lender  out  of  his  grave  in 
consecrated  ground  and  throwing  it  into  the  river  Po,  in 
order  to  stop  a  prolonged  rainstorm  ;  and  outbreaks  of 
the  same  spirit  were  frequent  in  other  countries.* 

*  For  Gerson's  argument  favouring  a  reasonable  rate  of  interest,  see  Coquelin 
and  Guillaumin,  Dictionnaire,  article  Inte'rit.  For  the  renewed  opposition  to  the 
taking  of  interest  in  England,  see  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce,  chap.  vi. 
The  statute  cited  is  3  Henry  VII,  chap,  vi  ;  it  is  found  in  Gibson's  Corpus  Juris 
Eccles.  Anglic.,  p.  1071.  For  the  adverse  decree  of  Leo  X,  see  Liegeois,  p.  76.  Sec 
also  Lecky,  Rationalism,  vol.  ii.  For  the  dragging  out  of  the  usurer's  body  at  Pia- 
cenza, see  Burckhardt,  The  Renaissance  in  Italy,  London,  1878,  vol.  ii,  p.  339. 
For  public  opinion  of  similar  strength  on  this  subject  in  England,  see  Cunningham, 
p.  239 ;  also  Pike,  History  of  Crime  in  England,  vol.  i,  pp.  127,  193.  For  good 
general  observations  on  the  same,  see  Stephen,  History  of  Criminal  Law  in  Eng- 
land, London,  1883,  vol.  iii,  pp.  195-197.  For  usury  laws  in  Castile  and  Aragon, 
see  Bedarride,  pp.  191,  192.  For  exceedingly  valuable  details  as  to  the  attitude  of 
the  mediaeval  Church,  see  Leopold  Delisle,  Etudes  sur  la  Classe  Agricolc  en  Nor- 
mandie  au  A f oven  Age,  Evreux,  1851,  pp.  200  et  sea.,  also  p.  468.  For  penalties  in 
France,  see  Matthew  Paris,  Chronica  Majora,  in  the  Rolls  Series,  especially  vol. 


272 


FROM    LEVITICUS    TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 


Another  mode  of  obtaining  relief  was  tried.  Subtle  theo- 
logians devised  evasions  of  various  sorts.  Two  among  these 
inventions  of  the  schoolmen  obtained  much  notoriety. 

The  first  was  the  doctrine  of  "damnum  emergens" ':  if  a 
lender  suffered  loss  by  the  failure  of  the  borrower  to  return 
a  loan  at  a  date  named,  compensation  might  be  made.  Thus 
it  was  that,  if  the  nominal  date  of  payment  was  made  to  fol- 
low quickly  after  the  real  date  of  the  loan,  the  compensation 
for  the  anticipated  delay  in  payment  had  a  very  strong  re- 
semblance to  interest.  Equally  cogent  was  the  doctrine  of 
"  lucrum  cessans " :  if  a  man,  in  order  to  lend  money,  was 
obliged  to  diminish  his  income  from  productive  enterprises, 
it  was  claimed  that  he  might  receive  in  return,  in  addition 
to  his  money,  an  amount  exactly  equal  to  this  diminution  in 
his  income. 

But  such  evasions  were  looked  upon  with  little  favour  by 
the  great  body  of  theologians,  and  the  name  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas  was  triumphantly  cited  against  them. 

Opposition  on  scriptural  grounds  to  the  taking  of  interest 
was  not  confined  to  the  older  Church.  Protestantism  was 
led  by  Luther  and  several  of  his  associates  into  the  same  line 
of  thought  and  practice.  Said  Luther :  "  To  exchange  any- 
thing with  any  one  and  gain  by  the  exchange  is  not  to  do 
a  charity,  but  to  steal.  Every  usurer  is  a  thief  worthy  of 
the  gibbet.  I  call  those  usurers  who  lend  money  at  five  or 
six  per  cent."  But  it  is  only  just  to  say  that  at  a  later  period 
Luther  took  a  much  more  moderate  view.  Melanchthon, 
defining  usury  as  any  interest  whatever,  condemned  it  again 
and  again;  and  the  Goldberg  Catechism  of  1558,  for  which 
he  wrote  a  preface  and  recommendation,  declares  every  per- 
son taking  interest  for  money  a  thief.  From  generation  to 
generation  this  doctrine  was  upheld  by  the  more  eminent 
divines  of  the  Lutheran  Church  in  all  parts  of  Germany. 

The  English  reformers  showed  the  same  hostility  to  in- 
terest-bearing loans.     Under  Henry  VIII  the  law  of  Henry 

iii,  pp.  iqi,  192.  For  a  curious  evasion,  sanctioned  by  Popes  Martin  V  and  Ca- 
lixtus  III  when  Church  corporations  became  money-lenders,  see  H.  C.  Lea  on 
The  Ecclesiastical  Treatment  of  Usury,  in  the  Yale  Review  for  February,  1894. 
For  a  detailed  development  of  interesting  subordinate  points  see  Ashley,  Introduc- 
tion to  English  Economic  History  and  Theory,  vol.  ii,  cli.  vi. 


HOSTILITY   TO    LOANS   AT    INTEREST.  273 

VII  against  taking  interest  had  been  modified  for  the  better  ; 
but  the  revival  of  religious  feeling  under  Edward  VI  caused 
in  1552  the  passage  of  the  "  Bill  of  Usury."  In  this  it  is  said, 
"  Forasmuch  as  usury  is  by  the  word  of  God  utterly  prohib- 
ited, as  a  vice  most  odious  and  detestable,  as  in  divers  places 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures  it  is  evident  to  be  seen,  which  thing 
by  no  godly  teachings  and  persuasions  can  sink  into  the 
hearts  of  divers  greedy,  uncharitable,  and  covetous  persons 
of  this  realm,  nor  yet,  by  any  terrible  threatenings  of  God's 
wrath  and  vengeance,"  etc.,  it  is  enacted  that  whosoever  shall 
thereafter  lend  money  "  for  any  manner  of  usury,  increase, 
lucre,  gain,  or  interest,  to  be  had,  received,  or  hoped  for," 
shall  forfeit  principal  and  interest,  and  suffer  imprisonment 
and  fine  at  the  king's  pleasure.* 

But,  most  fortunately,  it  happened  that  Calvin,  though 
at  times  stumbling  over  the  usual  texts  against  the  taking  of 
interest  for  money,  turned  finally  in  the  right  direction.  He 
cut  through  the  metaphysical  arguments  of  Aristotle,  and 
characterized  the  subtleties  devised  to  evade  the  Scriptures 
as  "  a  childish  game  with  God."  In  place  of  these  subtleties 
there  was  developed  among  Protestants  a  serviceable  fiction 
—the  statement  that  usury  means  illegal  or  oppressive  interest. 
Under  the  action  of  this  fiction,  commerce  and  trade  revived 
rapidly  in  Protestant  countries,  though  with  occasional 
checks  from  exact  interpreters  of  Scripture.  At  the  same 
period  in  France,  the  great  Protestant  jurist  Dumoulin 
brought  all  his  legal  learning  and  skill  in  casuistry  to  bear 
on  the  same  side.  A  certain  ferretlike  acuteness  and  lithe- 
ness  seem  to  have  enabled  him  to  hunt  down  the  opponents 
of  interest-taking  through  the  most  tortuous  arguments  of 
scholasticism. 

In  England  the  struggle  went  on  with  varying  fortune; 


*  For  Luther's  views,  see  his  sermon,  Von  dem  Wuchcr,  Wittenberg,  1519  ;  also 
the  Table  Talk,  cited  in  Coquelin  and  Guillaumin,  article  Intirtt.  For  the  later 
more  moderate  views  of  Luther,  Melanchthon,  and  Zwingli,  making  a  compromise 
with  the  needs  of  society,  see  Bohm-Bawerk,  p.  27,  citing  Wiskemann.  For  Me- 
lanchthon and  a  long  line  of  the  most  eminent  Lutheran  divines  who  have  de- 
nounced the  taking  of  interest,  see  Die  Wucherfrage,  St.  Louis,  1869,  pp.  94  et  seq. 
For  the  law  against  usury  under  Edward  VI,  see  Cobbett's  Parliamentary  History, 
vol.  i,  p.  596;  see  also  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce,  chap.  vi. 
46 


274 


FROM    LEVITICUS    TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 


statesmen  on  one  side,  and  theologians  on  the  other.  We 
have  seen  how,  under  Henry  VIII,  interest  was  allowed  at  a 
fixed  rate,  and  how,  the  development  of  English  Protestant- 
ism having  at  first  strengthened  the  old  theological  view, 
there  was,  under  Edward  VI,  a  temporarily  successful  at- 
tempt to  forbid  the  taking  of  interest  by  law. 

The  Puritans,  dwelling  on  Old  Testament  texts,  contin- 
ued for  a  considerable  time  especially  hostile  to  the  taking 
of  any  interest.  Henry  Smith,  a  noted  preacher,  thundered 
from  the  pulpit  of  St.  Clement  Danes  in  London  against 
"the  evasions  of  Scripture"  which  permitted  men  to  lend 
money  on  interest  at  all.  In  answer  to  the  contention  that 
only  "  biting  "  usury  was  oppressive,  Wilson,  a  noted  up- 
holder of  the  strict  theological  view  in  political  economy, 
declared :  "  There  is  difference  in  deed  between  the  bite  of 
a  dogge  and  the  bite  of  a  flea,  and  yet,  though  the  flea 
doth  lesse  harm,  yet  the  flea  doth  bite  after  hir  kinde,  yea, 
and  draweth  blood,  too.  But  what  a  world  this  is,  that 
men  will  make  sin  to  be  but  a  fleabite,  when  they  see  God's 
word  directly  against  them  !  " 

The  same  view  found  strong  upholders  among  contem- 
porary English  Catholics.  One  of  the  most  eminent  of 
these,  Nicholas  Sanders,  revived  very  vigorously  the  use 
of  an  old  scholastic  argument.  He  insisted  that  "  man  can 
not  sell  time,"  that  time  is  not  a  human  possession,  but  some- 
thing which  is  given  by  God  alone:  he  declared,  "Time 
was  not  of  your  gift  to  your  neighbour,  but  of  God's  gift  to 
you  both." 

In  the  Parliament  of  the  period,  we  find  strong  asser- 
tions of  the  old  idea,  with  constant  reference  to  Scripture 
and  the  fathers.  In  one  debate,  Wilson  cited  from  Ezekiel 
and  other  prophets  and  attributed  to  St.  Augustine  the  doc- 
trine that  "  to  take  but  a  cup  of  wine  is  usury  and  damnable." 
Fleetwood  recalled  the  law  of  King  Edward  the  Confessor, 
which  submitted  usurers  to  the  ordeal. 

But  arguments  of  this  sort  had  little  influence  upon 
Elizabeth  and  her  statesmen.  Threats  of  damnation  in  the 
next  world  troubled  them  little  if  they  could  have  their  way 
in  this.  They  re-established  the  practice  of  taking  interest 
under  restrictions,  and  this,  in  various  forms,  has  remained 


HOSTILITY   TO    LOANS   AT    INTEREST.  ^-; 

in  England  ever  since.  Most  notable  in  this  phase  of  the 
evolution  of  scientific  doctrine  in  political  economy  at  that 
period  is  the  emergence  of  a  recognised  difference  between 
usury  and  interest.  Between  these  two  words,  which  had 
so  long  been  synonymous,  a  distinction  now  appears:  the 
former  being  construed  to  indicate  oppressive  interest,  and 
the  lattery'//*./  rates  for  the  use  of  money.  This  idea  gradu- 
ally sank  into  the  popular  mind  of  Protestant  countries, 
and  the  scriptural  texts  no  longer  presented  any  difficulty 
to  the  people  at  large,  since  there  grew  up  a  general  be- 
lief that  the  word  "usury,"  as  employed  in  Scripture,  had 
always  meant  exorbitant  interest ;  and  this  in  spite  of  the 
parable  of  the  Talents.  Still,  that  the  old  Aristotelian  quib- 
ble had  not  been  entirely  forgotten,  is  clearly  seen  by  vari- 
ous passages  in  Shakespeare's  Merchant  of  Venice.  But  this 
line  of  reasoning  seems  to  have  received  its  quietus  from 
Lord  Bacon.  He  did  not,  indeed,  develop  a  strong  and  con- 
nected argument  on  the  subject;  but  he  burst  the  bonds  of 
Aristotle,  and  based  interest  for  money  upon  natural  laws. 
How  powerful  the  new  current  of  thought  was,  is  seen  from 
the  fact  that  James  I,  of  all  monarchs  the  most  fettered  by 
scholasticism  and  theology,  sanctioned  a  statute  dealing 
with  interest  for  money  as  absolutely  necessary.  Yet,  even 
after  this,  the  old  idea  asserted  itself ;  for  the  bishops  utterly 
refused  to  agree  to  the  law  allowing  interest  until  a  proviso 
was  inserted  that  "  nothing  in  this  law  contained  shall  be  con- 
strued or  expounded  to  allow  the  practice  of  usury  in  point 
of  religion  or  conscience."  The  old  view  cropped  out  from 
time  to  time  in  various  public  declarations.  Famous  among 
these  were  the  Treatise  of  Usury,  published  in  1612  by  Dr. 
Fenton,  who  restated  the  old  arguments  with  much  force, 
and  the  Usury  Condemned  of  John  Blaxton.  published  in  1634. 
Blaxton,  who  also  was  a  clergyman,  defined  usury  as  the  tak- 
ing of  any  interest  whatever  for  money,  citing  in  support  of 
this  view  six  archbishops  and  bishops  and  over  thirty  doctors 
of  divinity  in  the  Anglican  Church,  some  of  their  utterances 
being  very  violent  and  all  of  them  running  their  roots  down 
into  texts  of  Scripture.  Typical  among  these  is  a  sermon  of 
Bishop  Sands,  in  which  he  declares,  regarding  the  taking  of 
interest:    "This   canker   hath   corrupted    all    England;    we 


2-6  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

shall  doe  God  and  our  country  true  service  by  taking  away 
this  evil!  ;  represse  it  by  law,  else  the  heavy  hand  of  God 
hansreth  over  us  and  will  strike  us." 


II.    RETREAT    OF    THE   CHURCH,    PROTESTANT   AND 
CATHOLIC. 

But  about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  Sir 
Robert  Filmer  gave  this  doctrine  the  heaviest  blow  it  ever 
received  in  England.  Taking  up  Dr.  Fenton's  treatise,  he 
answered  it,  and  all  works  like  it,  in  a  way  which,  however 
unsuitable  to  this  century,  was  admirably  adapted  to  that. 
He  cites  Scripture  and  chops  logic  after  a  masterly  manner. 
Characteristic  is  this  declaration :  "  St.  Paul  doth,  with  one 
breath,  reckon  up  seventeen  sins,  and  yet  usury  is  none  of 
them  ;  but  many  preachers  can  not  reckon  up  seven  deadly 
sins,  except  they  make  usury  one  of  them."  Filmer  followed 
Fenton  not  only  through  his  theology,  but  through  his  polit- 
ical economy,  with  such  relentless  keenness  that  the  old  doc- 
trine seems  to  have  been  then  and  there  practically  worried 
out  of  existence,' so  far  as  England  was  concerned. 

Departures  from  the  strict  scriptural  doctrines  regarding 
interest  soon  became  frequent  in  Protestant  countries,  and 
they  were  followed  up  with  especial  vigour  in  Holland. 
Various  theologians  in  the  Dutch  Church  attempted  to 
assert  the  scriptural  view  by  excluding  bankers  from  the 
holy  communion  ;  but  the  commercial  vigour  of  the  republic 
was  too  strong :  Salmasius  led  on  the  forces  of  right  reason 
brilliantly,  and  by  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century 
the  question  was  settled  rightly  in  that  country.  This  work 
was  aided,  indeed,  by  a  far  greater  man,  Hugo  Grotius ;  but 
here  was  shown  the  power  of  an  established  dogma.  Great 
as  Grotius  was— and  it  may  well  be  held  that  his  book  on 
War  and  Peace  has  wrought  more  benefit  to  humanity  than 
any  other  attributed  to  human  authorship— he  was,  in  the 
matter  of  interest  for  money,  too  much  entangled  in  theo- 
logical reasoning  to  do  justice  to  his  cause  or  to  himself. 
He  declared  the  prohibition  of  it  to  be  scriptural,  but  re- 
sisted the  doctrine  of  Aristotle,  and  allowed  interest  on  cer- 
tain natural  and  practical  grounds. 


RETREAT  OF  THE  CHURCH,  FROTESTANT  AND  CATHOLIC.  277 

In  Germany  the  struggle  lasted  longer.  Of  some  little 
significance,  perhaps,  is  the  demand  of  Adam  Contzen,  in 
1629,  that  lenders  at  interest  should  be  punished  as  thieves; 
but  by  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  Puffendorf  and 
Leibnitz  had  gained  the  victory. 

Protestantism,  open  as  it  was  to  the  currents  of  modern 
thought,  could  not  long  continue  under  the  dominion  of 
ideas  unfavourable  to  economic  development,  and  perhaps 
the  most  remarkable  proof  of  this  was  presented  early  in 
the  eighteenth  century  in  America,  by  no  less  strict  a  theo- 
logian than  Cotton  Mather.  In  his  Magnalia  he  argues 
against  the  whole  theological  view  with  a  boldness,  acute- 
ness,  and  good  sense  which  cause  us  to  wonder  that  this  can 
be  the  same  man  who  was  so  infatuated  regarding  witch- 
craft. After  an  argument  so  conclusive  as  his,  there  could 
have  been  little  left  of  the  old  anti-economic  doctrine  in  New 
England.* 

But  while  the  retreat  of  the  Protestant  Church  from  the 
old  doctrine  regarding  the  taking  of  interest  was  henceforth 
easy,  in  the  Catholic  Church  it  was  far  more  difficult.  In- 
fallible popes  and  councils,  with  saints,  fathers,  and  doctors, 
had  so  constantly  declared  the  taking  of  any  interest  at  all  to 

*  For  Calvin's  views,  see  his  letter  published  in  the  appendix  to  Pearson's  The- 
ories on  Usury.  His  position  is  well  stated  in  Bohm-Bawerk,  pp.  28  et  seq.,  where 
citations  are  given.  See  also  Economic  Tracts,  No.  IV,  New  York,  1881,  pp.  34, 
35  ;  and  for  some  serviceable  Protestant  fictions,  see  Cunningham,  Christian  Opin- 
ion on  Usury,  pp.  60,  61.  For  Dumoulin  (Molinseus),  see  Bohm-Bawerk,  as  above, 
pp.  29  et  seq.  For  debates  on  usury  in  the  British  Parliament  in  Elizabeth's  time,  see 
Cobbett,  Parliamentary  History,  vol.  i,  pp.  756  et  seq.  A  striking  passage  in  Shake- 
speare is  found  in  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  Act  I,  scene  iii  :  "  If  thou  wilt  lend  this 
money,  lend  it  not  as  to  thy  friend;  for  when  did  friendship  take  a  breed  for  barren 
metal  of  his  friend?"  For  the  right  direction  taken  by  Lord  Bacon,  see  Neu- 
mann, Geschichte  des  Wnchers  in  Deutschland,  Halle,  1865,  pp.  497,  498-  For 
Salmasius,  seehisZk  Usuris,  Leyden,  1638  ;  and  for  others  mentioned,  see  Bohm- 
Bawerk,  pp.  34  et  seq.  ;  also  Lecky,  vol.  ii,  p.  256.  For  the  saving  clause  inserted  by 
the  bishops  in  the  statute  of  James  I,  see  the  Corpus  Juris  Eccles.  Anglic,  p.  107 1  ; 
also  Murray,  History  of  Usury,  Philadelphia,  1866,  p.  49.  For  Blaxton,  see  his 
English  Usurer,  or  Usury  Condemned,  by  John  Blaxton,  Preacher  of  God's  Word 
London,  1634.  Blaxton  gives  some  of  Calvin's  earlier  utterances  against  interest. 
For  Bishop  Sands's  sermon,  see  p.  11.  For  Filmer,  see  his  Qinestio  Quodlibetica, 
London,  1653,  reprinted  in  the  Harleian  Miscellany,  vol.  x,  pp.  105  et  seq.  For 
Grotius,  see  the  De  Jure  Belli  ac  Pads,  lib.  ii,  cap.  xii.  For  Cottuu  Mather's 
argument,  see  the  Magnalia,  London,  1702,  pp.  51,  52. 


2j8  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO   POLITICAL    ECONOMY. 

be  contrary  to  Scripture,  that  the  more  exact  though  less  for- 
tunate interpretation  of  the  sacred  text  relating  to  interest 
continued  in  Catholic  countries.  When  it  was  attempted 
in  France  in  the  seventeenth  century  to  argue  that  usury 
"  means  oppressive  interest,"  the  Theological  Faculty  of  the 
Sorbonne  declared  that  usury  is  the  taking  of  any  interest 
at  all,  no  matter  how  little  ;  and  the  eighteenth  chapter  of 
Ezekiel  was  cited  to  clinch  this  argument. 

Another  attempt  to  ease  the  burden  of  industry  and 
commerce  was  made  by  declaring  that  "  usury  means  in- 
terest demanded  not  as  a  matter  of  favour  but  as  a  matter 
of  right."  This,  too,  was  solemnly  condemned  by  Pope 
Innocent  XI. 

Again  an  attempt  was  made  to  find  a  way  out  of  the  dif- 
ficulty by  declaring  that  "  usury  is  interest  greater  than  the 
law  allows."  This,  too,  was  condemned,  and  so  also  was 
the  declaration  that  "  usury  is  interest  on  loans  not  for  a 
fixed  time." 

Still  the  forces  of  right  reason  pressed  on,  and  among 
them,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  in  France,  was  Richard 
Simon.  He  attempted  to  gloss  over  the  declarations  of 
Scripture  against  lending  at  interest,  in  an  elaborate  treatise, 
but  was  immediately  confronted  by  Bossuet.  Just  as  Bos- 
suet  had  mingled  Scripture  with  astronomy  and  opposed 
the  Copernican  theory,  so  now  he  mingled  Scripture  with 
political  economy  and  denounced  the  lending  of  money  at 
interest.  He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  Scriptures, 
the  councils  of  the  Church  from  the  beginning,  the  popes, 
the  fathers,  had  all  interpreted  the  prohibition  of  "  usury  " 
to  be  a  prohibition  of  any  lending  at  interest ;  and  he  demon- 
strated this  interpretation  to  be  the  true  one.  Simon  was 
put  to  confusion  and  his  book  condemned. 

There  was  but  too  much  reason  for  Bossuet's  interpreta- 
tion. There  stood  the  fact  that  the  prohibition  of  one  of  the 
most  simple  and  beneficial  principles  in  political  and  eco- 
nomical science  was  affirmed,  not  only  by  the  fathers,  but  by 
twenty-eight  councils  of  the  Church,  six  of  them  general 
councils,  and  by  seventeen  popes,  to  say  nothing  of  innumer- 
able doctors  in  theology  and  canon  law.  And  these  pro- 
hibitions by   the   Church   had   been  accepted  as   of  divine 


RETREAT  OF  THE  CHURCH,  PROTESTANT  AND  CATHOLIC.  279 

origin  by  all  obedient  sons  of  the  Church  in  the  government 
of  France.  Such  rulers  as  Charles  the  Bald  in  the  ninth 
century,  and  St.  Louis  in  the  thirteenth,  had  riveted  this 
idea  into  the  civil  law  so  firmly  that  it  seemed  impossible 
ever  to  detach  it.* 

As  might  well  be  expected,  Italy  was  one  of  the  coun- 
tries in  which  the  theological  theory  regarding  usury— lend- 
ing at  interest — was  most  generally  asserted  and  assented  to. 
Among  the  great  number  of  Italian  canonists  who  supported 
the  theory,  two  deserve  especial  mention,  as  affording  a 
contrast  to  the  practical  manner  in  which  the  commercial 
Italians  met  the  question. 

In  the  sixteenth  century,  very  famous  among  canonists 
was  the  learned  Benedictine,  Vilagut.  In  1589  he  published 
at  Venice  his  great  work  on  usury,  supporting  with  much 
learning  and  vigour  the  most  extreme  theological  conse- 
quences of  the  old  doctrine.  He  defines  usury  as  the  tak- 
ing of  anything  beyond  the  original  loan,  and  declares  it 
mortal  sin  ;  he  advocates  the  denial  to  usurers  of  Christian 
burial,  confession,  the  sacraments,  absolution,  and  connec- 
tion with  the  universities  ;  he  declares  that  priests  receiving 
offerings  from  usurers  should  refrain  from  exercising  their 
ministry  until  the  matter  is  passed  upon  by  the  bishop. 

About  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  another 
ponderous  folio  was  published  in  Venice  upon  the  same  sub- 
ject and  with  the  same  title,  by  Onorato  Leotardi.  So  far 
from  showing  any  signs  of  yielding,  he  is  even  more  extreme 
than  Vilagut  had  been,  and  quotes  with  approval  the  old 
declaration  that  lenders  of  money  at  interest  are  not  only 
robbers  but  murderers. 

So  far  as  we  can  learn,  no  real  opposition  was  made  in 
either  century  to  this  theory,  as  a  theory  ;  as  to  practice,  it 


*  For  the  declaration  of  the  Sorbonne  in  the  seventeenth  century  against  any  tak- 
ing of  interest,  see  Lecky,  Rationalism,  vol.  ii,  p.  24S,  note.  For  the  special  con- 
demnation by  Innocent  XI,  see  Viva,  Damnahc  Theses,  Pavia,  I7I5-PP-  112-114- 
For  consideration  of  various  ways  of  escaping  the  difficulty  regarding  interest,  see 
Lecky,  Rationalism,  vol.  ii,  pp.  249,  250.  For  Bossuet's  strong  declaration  against 
taking  interest,  see  his  (Envres,  Paris,  1845-46,  vol.  i,  p.  734,  vol.  vi,  p.  654,  and 
vol.  ix,  p.  4qetsea.  For  the  number  of  councils  and  popes  condemning  usury,  see 
Lecky,  as  above,  vol.  ii,  p.  255,  note,  citing  Concilia. 


28o  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

was  different.  The  Italian  traders  did  not  answer  theological 
argument ;  they  simply  overrode  it.  In  spite  of  theology, 
great  banks  were  established,  and  especially  that  of  Venice 
at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  and  those  of  Barcelona  and 
Genoa  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth.  Nowhere  was  com- 
merce carried  on  in  more  complete  defiance  of  this  and  other 
theological  theories  hampering  trade  than  in  the  very  city 
where  these  great  treatises  were  published.  The  sin  of 
usury,  like  the  sin  of  commerce  with  the  Mohammedans, 
seems  to  have  been  settled  for  by  the  Venetian  merchants  on 
their  deathbeds ;  and  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  magnifi- 
cent churches  and  ecclesiastical  adornments  of  the  city. 

By  the  seventeenth  century  the  clearest  thinkers  in  the 
Roman  Church  saw  that  her  theology  must  be  readjusted  to 
political  economy  :  so  began  a  series  of  amazing  attempts  to 
reconcile  a  view  permitting  usury  with  the  long  series  of 
decrees  of  popes  and  councils  forbidding  it. 

In  Spain,  the  great  Jesuit  casuist  Escobar  led  the  way, 
and  rarely  had  been  seen  such  exquisite  hair-splitting.  %But 
his  efforts  were  not  received  with  the  gratitude  they  per- 
haps deserved.  Pascal,  revolting  at  their  moral  effect,  at- 
tacked them  unsparingly  in  his  Provincial  Letters,  citing  espe- 
cially such  passages  as  the  following :  "  It  is  usury  to  receive 
profit  from  those  to  whom  one  lends,  if  it  be  exacted  as  justly 
due ;  but,  if  it  be  exacted  as  a  debt  of  gratitude,  it  is  not 
usury."  This  and  a  multitude  of  similar  passages  Pascal 
covered  with  the  keen  ridicule  and  indignant  denunciation 
of  which  he  was  so  great  a  master. 

But  even  the  genius  of  Pascal  could  not  stop  such  efforts. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  they  were  renewed  by  a  far  greater 
theologian  than  Escobar— by  him  who  was  afterward  made 
a  saint  and  proclaimed  a  doctor  of  the  Church — Alphonso 
Liguori. 

Starting  with  bitter  denunciations  of  usury,  Liguori  soon 
developed  a  multitude  of  subtle  devices  for  escaping  the 
guilt  of  it.  Presenting  a  long  and  elaborate  theory  of  "  men- 
tal usury,"  he  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that,  if  the  borrower 
pay  interest  of  his  own  free  will,  the  lender  may  keep  it.  In 
answer  to  the  question  whether  the  lender  may  keep  what 
the  borrower  paid,  not  out  of  gratitude  but  out  of  fear — fear 


RETREAT  OF  THE  CHURCH,   PROTESTANT  AND  CATHOLIC.  28l 

that  otherwise  loans  might  be  refused  him  in  future — Li°-uori 
says,  "  To  be  usury  it  must  be  paid  by  reason  of  a  contract, 
or  as  justly  due  ;  payment  by  reason  of  such  a  fear  does  not 
cause  interest  to  be  paid  as  an  actual  price."  Again  Lio-uori 
tells  us,  "  It  is  not  usury  to  exact  something  in  return  for  the 
danger  and  expense  of  regaining  the  principal."  The  old 
subterfuges  of  "  Damnum  emergens  "  and  "  Lucrum  cessans  "  are 
made  to  do  full  duty.  A  remarkable  quibble  is  found  in  the 
answer  to  the  question  whether  he  sins  who  furnishes  money 
to  a  man  whom  he  knows  to  intend  employing  it  in  usury. 
After  citing  affirmative  opinions  from  many  writers,  Liguori 
says,  "  Notwithstanding  these  opinions,  the  better  opinion 
seems  to  me  to  be  that  the  man  thus  putting  out  his  money 
is  not  bound  to  make  restitution,  for  his  action  is  not  injuri- 
ous to  the  borrower,  but  rather  favourable  to  him,"  and  this 
reasoning  the  saint  develops  at  great  length. 

In  the  Latin  countries  this  sort  of  casuistry  eased  the  re- 
lations of  the  Church  with  the  bankers,  and  it  was  full  time ; 
for  ^ow  there  came  arguments  of  a  different  kind.  The 
eighteenth  century  philosophy  had  come  upon  the  stage,  and 
the  first  effective  onset  of  political  scientists  against  the  theo- 
logical opposition  in  southern  Europe  was  made  in  Italy — the 
most  noted  leaders  in  the  attack  being  Galiani  and  Maffei. 
Here  and  there  feeble  efforts  were  made  to  meet  them,  but 
it  was  felt  more  and  more  by  thinking  churchmen  that  en- 
tirely different  tactics  must  be  adopted. 

About  the  same  time  came  an  attack  in  France,  and 
though  its  results  were  less  immediate  at  home,  they  were 
much  more  effective  abroad.  In  1748  appeared  Montes- 
quieu's Spirit  of  the  Laivs.  In  this  famous  book  were  concen- 
trated twenty  years  of  study  and  thought  by  a  great  thinker 
on  the  interests  of  the  world  about  him.  In  eighteen  months 
it  went  through  twenty-two  editions ;  it  was  translated  into 
every  civilized  language ;  and  among  the  things  on  which 
Montesquieu  brought  his  wit  and  wisdom  to  bear  with  espe- 
cial force  was  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  regarding  interest 
on  loans.  In  doing  this  he  was  obliged  to  use  a  caution  in 
forms  which  seems  strangely  at  variance  with  the  boldness 
of  his  ideas.  In  view  of  the  strictness  of  ecclesiastical  con- 
trol in  France,  he  felt  it  safest  to  make  his  whole  attack  upon 


232  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

those  theological  and  economic  follies  of  Mohammedan  coun- 
tries which  were  similar  to  those  which  the  theological  spirit 
had  fastened  on  France.* 

By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Church  au- 
thorities at  Rome  clearly  saw  the  necessity  of  a  concession : 
the  world  would  endure  theological  restriction  no  longer  ;  a 
way  of  escape  must  be  found.  It  was  seen,  even  by  the  most 
devoted  theologians,  that  mere  denunciations  and  use  of  theo- 
logical arguments  or  scriptural  texts  against  the  scientific 
idea  were  futile. 

To  this  feeling  it  was  due  that,  even  in  the  first  years  of 
the  century,  the  Jesuit  casuists  had  come  to  the  rescue. 
With  exquisite  subtlety  some  of  their  acutest  intellects  de- 
voted themselves  to  explaining  away  the  utterances  on  this 
subject  of  saints,  fathers,  doctors,  popes,  and  councils.  These 
explanations  were  wonderfully  ingenious,  but  many  of  the 
older  churchmen  continued  to  insist  upon  the  orthodox  view, 
and  at  last  the  Pope  himself  intervened.  Fortunately  for  the 
world,  the  seat  of  St.  Peter  was  then  occupied  by  Benedict 
XIV,  certainly  one  of  the  most  gifted,  morally  and  intel- 
lectually, in  the  whole  line  of  Roman  pontiffs.  Tolerant  and 
sympathetic  for  the  oppressed,  he  saw  the  necessity  of  tak- 
ing up  the  question,  and  he  grappled  with  it  effectually  :  he 
rendered  to  Catholicism  a  service  like  that  which  Calvin 
had  rendered  to  Protestantism,  by  shrewdly  cutting  a  way 
through  the  theological  barrier.  In  1745  he  issued  his  en- 
cyclical Vix  pervenit,  which  declared  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Church  remained  consistent  with  itself ;  that  usury  is  in- 
deed a  sin,  and  that  it  consists  in  demanding  any  amount  beyond 
the  exact  amount  lent,  but  that  there  are  occasions  when  on 
special  grounds  the  lender  may  obtain  such  additional  sum. 

What  these  "occasions"  and  "special  grounds"  might 
be,  was  left  very  vague  ;  but  this  action  was  sufficient. 

*  For  Vilagut,  see  his  Tractatus  de  Usuris,  Venice,  1589,  especially  pp.  21,  25, 
399.  For  Leotardi,  see  his  De  Usuris,  Venice,  1655,  especially  preface,  pp.  6,  7 
et  seq.  For  Pascal  and  Escobar,  see  the  Provincial  Letters,  edited  by  Sayres, 
Cambridge,  1880,  Letter  VIII,  pp.  183-186  ;  also  a  note  to  same  letter,  p.  196.  For 
Liguori,  see  his  Theologia  M oralis,  Paris,  1834,  lib.  iii,  tract  v,  cap.  iii :  De  Con- 
tractibus,  dub.  vii.  For  the  eighteenth  century  attack  in  Italy,  see  Bohm-Bawerk, 
pp.  48  et  seq.  For  Montesquieu's  view  of  interest  on  loans,  see  the  Esprit  des  T ois, 
livre  xxii. 


RETREAT  OF  THE  CHURCH,  PROTESTANT  AND  CATHOLIC.  283 

At  the  same  time  no  new  restrictions  upon  books  advocat- 
ing the  taking  of  interest  for  money  were  imposed,  and,  in  the 
year  following  his  encyclical,  Benedict  openly  accepted  the 
dedication  of  one  of  them— the  work  of  Maffei,  and  perhaps 
the  most  cogent  of  all. 

Like  the  casuistry  of  Boscovich  in  using  the  Copernican 
theory  for  "  convenience  in  argument,"  while  acquiescing  in 
its  condemnation  by  the  Church  authorities,  this  encyclical 
of  Pope  Benedict  broke  the  spell.  Turgot,  Quesnay,  Adam 
Smith,  Hume,  Bentham,  and  their  disciples  pressed  on,  and 
science  won  for  mankind  another  great  victory* 

Yet  in  this  case,  as  in  others,  insurrections  against  the 
sway  of  scientific  truth  appeared  among  some  overzealous 
religionists.  When  the  Sorbonne,  having  retreated  from  its 
old  position,  armed  itself  with  new  casuistries  against  those 
who  held  to  its  earlier  decisions,  sundry  provincial  doctors 
in  theology  protested  indignantly,  making  the  old  citations 
from  the  Scriptures,  fathers,  saints,  doctors,  popes,  councils, 
and  canonists.  Again  the  Roman  court  intervened.  In  1830 
the  Inquisition  at  Rome,  with  the  approval  of  Pius  VIII, 
though  still  declining  to  commit  itself  on  the  doctrine  in- 
volved, decreed  that,  as  to  practice,  confessors  should  no 
longer  disturb  lenders  of  money  at  legal  interest. 

But  even  this  did  not  quiet  the  more  conscientious  theo- 
logians. The  old  weapons  were  again  furbished  and  hurled 
by  the  Abbe  Laborde,  Vicar  of  the  Metropolitan  Arch- 
diocese of  Auch,  and  by  the  Abbe  Dennavit,  Professor  of 
Theology  at  Lyons.      Good  Abbe  Dennavit  declared  that 


*  For  Quesnay,  see  his  Observations  sur  V '  Inte'rlt  de  V Argent,  in  his  (FAivres, 
Frankfort  and  Paris,  iSSS,  pp.  399  et  seq.  For  Turgot,  see  the  Collection  des  £co- 
nomistes,  Paris,  1844,  vols,  iii  and  iv  ;  also  Blanqui,  Histoire  de  V  Economie  Politique, 
English  translation,  p.  373.  For  an  excellent  though  brief  summary  of  the  efforts 
of  the  Jesuits  to  explain  away  the  old  action  of  the  Church,  see  Lecky,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
256,  257.  For  the  action  of  Benedict  XIV,  see  Reusch,  Der  Index  der  verbotenen 
Bticher,  Bonn,  18S5,  vol.  ii,  pp.  847,  848.  For  a  comical  picture  of  the  "quag- 
mire "  into  which  the  hierarchy  brought  itself  in  the  squaring  of  its  practice  with 
its  theory,  see  Dollinger  as  above,  pp.  227,  228.  For  cunningly  vague  statements 
of  the  action  of  Benedict  XIV,  see  Mastrofini,  Sur  V  Ustire,  French  translation, 
Lyons,  1834,  pp.  125,  255.  The  abbate,  as  will  be  seen,  has  not  the  slightest  hesi- 
tation in  telling  an  untruth  in  order  to  preserve  the  consistency  of  papal  action 
in  the  matter  of  usury— e.  g.,  pp.  93,  94,  96>  and  elsewhere. 


284  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO   POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

he  refused  absolution  to  those  who  took  interest  and  to 
priests  who  pretend  that  the  sanction  of  the  civil  law  is 
sufficient. 

But  the  "  wisdom  of  the  serpent  "  was  again  brought  into 
requisition,  and  early  in  the  decade  between  1830  and  1840 
the  Abbate  Mastrofini  issued  a  work  on  usury,  which,  he  de- 
clared on  its  title-page,  demonstrated  that  "  moderate  usury 
is  not  contrary  to  Holy  Scripture,  or  natural  law,  or  the  de- 
cisions of  the  Church."  Nothing  can  be  more  comical  than 
the  suppressions  of  truth,  evasions  of  facts,  jugglery  with 
phrases,  and  perversions  of  history,  to  which  the  abbate  is 
forced  to  resort  throughout  his  book  in  order  to  prove  that 
the  Church  has  made  no  mistake.  In  the  face  of  scores  of 
explicit  deliverances  and  decrees  of  fathers,  doctors,  popes, 
and  councils  against  the  taking  of  any  interest  whatever  for 
money,  he  coolly  pretended  that  what  they  had  declared 
against  was  exorbitant  interest.  He  made  a  merit  of  the 
action  of  the  Church,  and  showed  that  its  course  had  been 
a  blessing  to  humanity.  But  his  masterpiece  is  in  dealing 
with  the  edicts  of  Clement  V  and  Benedict  XIV.  As  to  the 
first,  it  will  be  remembered  that  Clement,  in  accord  with  the 
Council  of  Vienne,  had  declared  that  "  any  one  who  shall 
pertinaciously  presume  to  affirm  that  the  taking  of  interest 
for  money  is  not  a  sin,  we  decree  him  to  be  a  heretic  fit 
for  punishment,"  and  we  have  seen  that  Benedict  XIV  did 
not  at  all  deviate  from  the  doctrines  of  his  predecessors. 
Yet  Mastrofini  is  equal  to  his  task,  and  brings  out,  as 
the  conclusion  of  his  book,  the  statement  put  upon  his 
title-page,  that  what  the  Church  condemns  is  only  exorbitant 
interest. 

This  work  was  sanctioned  by  various  high  ecclesiastical 
dignitaries,  and  served  its  purpose  ;  for  it  covered  the  re- 
treat of  the  Church. 

In  1872  the  Holy  Office,  answering  a  question  solemnly 
put  by  the  Bishop  of  Ariano,  as  solemnly  declared  that  those 
who  take  eight  per  cent  interest  per  annum  are  "  not  to  be 
disquieted";  and  in  1873  appeared  a  book  published  under 
authority  from  the  Holy  See,  allowing  the  faithful  to  take 
moderate  interest  under  condition  that  any  future  decisions 
of  the  Pope  should  be  implicitly  obeyed.     Social  science  as 


RETREAT  OF  THE  CHURCH,  PROTESTANT  AND  CATHOLIC.  285 

applied  to  political  economy  had  gained  a  victory  final  and 
complete.  The  Torlonia  family  at  Rome  to-day,  with  its 
palaces,  chapels,  intermarriages,  affiliations,  and  papal  favour 
— all  won  by  lending  money  at  interest,  and  by  liberal  gifts, 
from  the  profits  of  usury,  to  the  Holy  See — is  but  one  out  of 
many  growths  of  its  kind  on  ramparts  long  since  surrendered 
and  deserted.* 

The  dealings  of  theology  with  public  economy  were  by 
no  means  confined  to  the  taking  of  interest  for  money.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  note  the  restrictions  placed  upon 
commerce  by  the  Church  prohibition  of  commercial  inter- 
course with  infidels,  against  which  the  Republic  of  Venice 
fought  a  good  fight;  to  note  how,  by  a  most  curious  perver- 
sion of  Scripture  in  the  Greek  Church,  many  of  the  peas- 
antry of  Russia  were  prevented  from  raising  and  eating  pota- 
toes ;  how,  in  Scotland,  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  the 
use  of  fanning  mills  for  winnowing  grain  was  widely  de- 
nounced as  contrary  to  the  text,  "  The  wind  bloweth  where 
it  listeth,"  etc.,  as  leaguing  with  Satan,  who  is  "  Prince  of  the 
powers  of  the  air,"  and  therefore  as  sufficient  cause  for 
excommunication  from  the  Scotch  Church.  Instructive  it 
would  be  also  to  note  how  the  introduction  of  railways  was 
declared  by  an  archbishop  of  the  French  Church  to  be  an 
evidence  of  the  divine  displeasure  against  country  innkeep- 
ers who  set  meat  before  their  guests  on  fast  days,  and  who 
were    now  punished  by  seeing   travellers    carried  by  their 

*  For  the  decree  forbidding  confessors  to  trouble  lenders  of  money  at  legal 
interest,  see  Addis  and  Arnold,  Catholic  Dictionary,  as  above  ;  also  Mastrofini,  as 
above,  in  the  appendix,  where  various  other  recent  Roman  decrees  are  given.  As  to 
the  controversy  generally,  see  Mastrofini  ;  also  La  Re'plique  Jes  douze  Docteurs,  cited 
by  Guillaumin  and  Coquelin  ;  also  Reusch,  vol.  ii,  p.  850.  As  an  example  of  Mas- 
trofini's  way  of  making  black  appear  white,  compare  the  Latin  text  of  the  decree 
on  page  97  with  his  statements  regarding  it  ;  see  also  his  cunning  substitution  of 
the  new  significance  of  the  word  usury  for  the  old  in  various  parts  of  his  work.  A 
good  historical  presentation  of  the  general  subject  will  be  found  in  Roscher, 
Geschichte  der  National-Oeconomie  in  Deulschland,  MUnchen,  1874,  under  articles 
Wucher  and  Zinsnehmen.  For  France,  see  especially  Petit,  Traite"  de  V  [/sure, 
Paris,  1840;  and  for  Germany,  see  Neumann,  Geschichte  des  Wuchers  in  Deutsch- 
land, Halle,  1865.  For  the  view  of  a  modern  leader  of  thought  in  this  field,  see 
Jeremy  Bentham,  Defence  of  Usury,  Letter  X.  For  an  admirable  piece  of  research 
into  the  nicer  points  involved  in  the  whole  subject,  see  H.  C.  Lea,  7 he  Ecclesias- 
tical Treatment  of  Usury,  in  the  Yale  Review  for  February,  1S94. 


286  FROM    LEVITICUS   TO    POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

doors  ;  how  railways  and  telegraphs  were  denounced  from  a 
few  noted  pulpits  as  heralds  of  Antichrist;  and  how  in  Prot- 
estant England  the  curate  of  Rotherhithe,  at  the  breaking 
in  of  the  Thames  Tunnel,  so  destructive  to  life  and  property, 
declared  it  from  his  pulpit  a  just  judgment  upon  the  pre- 
sumptuous aspirations  of  mortal  man. 

The  same  tendency  is  seen  in  the  opposition  of  conscien- 
tious men  to  the  taking  of  the  census  in  Sweden  and  the 
United  States,  on  account  of  the  terms  in  which  the  num- 
bering of  Israel  is  spoken  of  in  the  Old  Testament.  Re- 
ligious scruples  on  similar  grounds  have  also  been  avowed 
against  so  beneficial  a  thing  as  life  insurance. 

Apparently  unimportant  as  these  manifestations  are,  they 
indicate  a  widespread  tendency  ;  in  the  application  of  scrip- 
tural declarations  to  matters  of  social  economy,  which  has 
not  yet  ceased,  though  it  is  fast  fading  away.* 

Worthy  of  especial  study,  too,  would  be  the  evolution  of 
the  modern  methods  of  raising  and  bettering  the  condi- 
tion of  the  poor, — the  evolution,  especially,  of  the  idea  that 
men  are  to  be  helped  to  help  themselves,  in  opposition  to 
the  old  theories  of  indiscriminate  giving,  which,  taking  root 
in  some  of  the  most  beautiful  utterances  of  our  sacred  books, 
grew  in  the  warm   atmosphere  of  mediaeval  devotion  into 

*  For  various  interdicts  laid  on  commerce  by  the  Church,  see  Heyd,  Histoire  du 
Commerce  du  Levant  an  A/oyen-Age,  Leipsic,  1886,  vol.  ii, passim.  For  the  injury 
done  to  commerce  by  prohibition  of  intercourse  with  the  infidel,  see  Lindsay,  His- 
tory of  Merchant  Shipping,  London,  1S74,  vol.  ii.  For  superstitions  regarding  the 
introduction  of  the  potato  in  Russia,  and  the  name  "  devil's  root  "  given  it,  see  Hell- 
wald,  Culturgesckichte,  vol.  ii,  p.  476  ;  aFso  Haxthausen,  La  Russie.  For  opposi- 
tion to  winnowing  machines,  see  Burton,  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  viii,  p.  511  ;  also 
Lecky,  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  83  ;  also  Mause  Headrigg's  views  in  Scott's 
Old  Mortality,  chap.  vii.  For  the  case  of  a  person  debarred  from  the  communion 
for  "  raising  the  devil's  wind  "  with  a  winnowing  machine,  see  Works  of  Sir  J.  Y. 
Simpson,  vol.  ii.  Those  doubting  the  authority  or  motives  of  Simpson  may  be  re- 
minded that  he  was  to  the  day  of  his  death  one  of  the  strictest  adherents  to  Scotch 
orthodoxy.  As  to  the  curate  of  Rotherhithe,  see  Journal  of  Sir  I.  Brunei  for  May 
20,  1827,  in  Life  of  L.  K.  Brunei,  p.  30.  As  to  the  conclusions  drawn  from  the 
numbering  of  Israel,  see  Michaelis,  Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of  Moses,  1874,  vol. 
ii,  p.  3.  The  author  of  this  work  himself  witnessed  the  reluctance  of  a  very  con- 
scientious man  to  answer  the  questions  of  a  census  marshal,  Mr.  Lewis  Hawley, 
of  Syracuse,  N.  Y.  ;  and  this  reluctance  was  based  upon  the  reasons  assigned  in 
II  Samuel  xxiv,  1,  and  I  Chronicles  xxi,  1,  for  the  numbering  of  the  children  of 
Israel. 


RETREAT  OF  THE  CHURCH,  PROTESTANT  AND  CATHOLIC.  2S7 

great  systems  for  the  pauperizing  of  the  labouring  classes. 
Here,  too,  scientific  modes  of  thought  in  social  science  have 
given  a  new  and  nobler  fruitage  to  the  whole  growth  of 
Christian  benevolence.* 


*  Among  the  vast  number  of  authorities  regarding  the  evolution  of  better  meth- 
ods in  dealing  with  pauperism,  I  would  call  attention  to  a  work  which  is  especially 
suggestive — Behrends,  Christianity  and  Socialism,  New  York,  1SS6. 


CHAPTER   XX. 

FROM   THE  DIVINE   ORACLES    TO    THE  HIGHER 

CRITICISM. 

I.    THE   OLDER    INTERPRETATION. 

The  great  sacred  books  of  the  world  are  the  most  pre- 
cious  of  human  possessions.  They  embody  the  deepest 
searchings  into  the  most  vital  problems  of  humanity  in  all 
its  stages:  the  naive  guesses  of  the  world's  childhood,  the 
opening  conceptions  of  its  youth,  the  more  fully  rounded 
beliefs  of  its  maturity. 

These  books,  no  matter  how  unhistorical  in  parts  and  at 
times,  are  profoundly  true.  They  mirror  the  evolution  of 
man's  loftiest  aspirations,  hopes,  loves,  consolations,  and  en- 
thusiasms ;  his  hates  and  fears;  his  views  of  his  origin  and 
destiny  ;  his  theories  of  his  rights  and  duties  ;  and  these  not 
merely  in  their  lights  but  in  their  shadows.  Therefore  it  is 
that  they  contain  the  germs  of  truths  most  necessary  in  the 
evolution  of  humanity,  and  give  to  these  germs  the  environ- 
ment and  sustenance  which  best  insure  their  growth  and 
strength. 

With  wide  differences  in  origin  and  character,  this  sacred 
literature  has  been  developed  and  has  exercised  its  influ- 
ence in  obedience  to  certain  general  laws.  First  of  these 
in  time,  if  not  in  importance,  is  that  which  governs  its  ori- 
gin :  in  all  civilizations  we  find  that  the  Divine  Spirit  work- 
ing in  the  mind  of  man  shapes  his  sacred  books  first  of  all 
out  of  the  chaos  of  myth  and  legend  ;  and  of  these  books, 
when  life  is  thus  breathed  into  them,  the  fittest  survive. 

So  broad  and  dense  is  this  atmosphere  of  myth  and  legend 
enveloping  them  that  it  lingers  about  them  after  they  have 
been  brought  forth  full-orbed  ;  and,  sometimes,  from  it  are 

288 


THE   OLDER    INTERPRETATION. 


289 


even  produced  secondary  mythical  and  legendary  concre- 
tions— satellites  about  these  greater  orbs  of  early  thought. 
Of  these  secondary  growths  one  may  be  mentioned  as  show- 
ing how  rich  in  myth-making  material  was  the  atmosphere 
which  enveloped  our  own  earlier  sacred  literature. 

In  the  third  century  before  Christ  there  began  to  be  elab- 
orated among  the  Jewish  scholars  of  Alexandria,  then  the 
great  centre  of  human  thought,  a  Greek  translation  of  the 
main  books  constituting  the  Old  Testament.  Nothing  could 
be  more  natural  at  that  place  and  time  than  such  a  transla- 
tion ;  yet  the  growth  of  explanatory  myth  and  legend  around 
it  was  none  the  less  luxuriant.  There  was  indeed  a  twofold 
growth.  Among  the  Jews  favourable  to  the  new  version  a 
legend  rose  which  justified  it.  This  legend  in  its  first  stage 
was  to  the  effect  that  the  Ptolemy  then  on  the  Egyptian 
throne  had,  at  the  request  of  his  chief  librarian,  sent  to  Jeru- 
salem for  translators;  that  the  Jewish  high  priest  Eleazar 
had  sent  to  the  king  a  most  precious  copy  of  the  Scriptures 
from  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  six  most  venerable,  de- 
vout, and  learned  scholars  from  each  of  the  twelve  tribes  of 
Israel ;  that  the  number  of  translators  thus  corresponded 
with  the  mysterious  seventy-two  appellations  of  God;  and 
that  the  combined  efforts  of  these  seventy-two  men  pro- 
duced a  marvellously  perfect  translation. 

But  in  that  atmosphere  of  myth  and  marvel  the  legend 
continued  to  grow,  and  soon  we  have  it  blooming  forth  yet 
more  gorgeously  in  the  statement  that  King  Ptolemy  ordered 
each  of  the  seventy-two  to  make  by  himself  a  full  translation 
of  the  entire  Old  Testament,  and  shut  up  each  translator  in 
a  separate  cell  on  the  island  of  Pharos,  secluding  him  there 
until  the  work  was  done ;  that  the  work  of  each  was  com- 
pleted in  exactly  seventy-two  days ;  and  that  when,  at  the 
end  of  the  seventy-two  days,  the  seventy-two  translations 
were  compared,  each  was  found  exactly  like  all  the  others. 
This  showed  clearly  Jehovah's  approval. 

But  out  of  all  this  myth  and  legend  there  was  also  evolved 
an  account  of  a  very  different  sort.  The  Jews  who  remained 
faithful  to  the  traditions  of  their  race  regarded  this  Greek 
version  as  a  profanation,  and  therefore  there  grew  up  the 
legend  that  on  the  completion  of  the  work  there  was  dark- 

47 


290 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


ness  over  the  whole  earth  during  three  days.  This  showed 
clearly  Jehovah's  disapproval. 

These  well-known  legends,  which  arose  within  what — as 
compared  with  any  previous  time — was  an  exceedingly  en- 
lightened period,  and  which  were  steadfastly  believed  by  a 
vast  multitude  of  Jews  and  Christians  for  ages,  are  but  single 
examples  among  scores  which  show  how  inevitably  such 
traditions  regarding  sacred  books  are  developed  in  the  ear- 
lier stages  of  civilization,  when  men  explain  everything  by 
miracle  and  nothing  by  law.* 

As  the  second  of  these  laws  governing  the  evolution  of 
sacred  literature  may  be  mentioned  that  which  we  have  con- 
stantly seen  so  effective  in  the  growth  of  theological  ideas 
— that  to  which  Comte  gave  the  name  of  the  Lata  of  Wills 
and  Causes.  Obedient  to  this,  man  attributes  to  the  Supreme 
Being  a  physical,  intellectual,  and  moral  structure  like  his 
own ;  hence  it  is  that  the  votary  of  each  of  the  great  world 
religions  ascribes  to  its  sacred  books  what  he  considers  abso- 
lute perfection :  he  imagines  them  to  be  what  he  himself 
would  give  the  world,  were  he  himself  infinitely  good,  wise, 
and  powerful. 

A  very  simple  analogy  might  indeed  show  him  that  even 
a  literature  emanating  from  an  all-wise,  beneficent,  and  pow- 
erful author  might  not  seem  perfect  when  judged  by  a 
human  standard  ;  for  he  has  only  to  look  about  him  in  the 
world  to  find  that  the  work  which  he  attributes  to  an  all- 
wise,  all-beneficent,  and  all-powerful  Creator  is  by  no  means 
free  from  evil  and  wrong. 

But  this  analogy  long  escapes  him,  and  the  exponent  of 
each  great  religion  proves  to  his  own  satisfaction,  and  to  the 
edification  of  his  fellows,  that  their  own  sacred  literature  is 
absolutely  accurate  in  statement,  infinitely  profound  in  mean- 

*  For  the  legend  regarding  the  Septuagint,  especially  as  developed  by  the  letters 
of  Pseudo-Aristeas,  and  for  quaint  citations  from  the  fathers  regarding  it,  see  The 
History  of  the  Seventy-two  Interpretators,  from  the  Greek  of  Aristeas,  translated  by 
Mr.  Lewis,  London,  1715  ;  also  Clement  of  Alexandria,  in  the  Ante-Nicene  Chris- 
tian Library,  Edinburgh,  1S67,  p.  448.  For  interesting  summaries  showing  the 
growth  of  the  story,  see  Drummond,  Philo  Judieus  and  the  Growth  of  the  Alexan- 
drian Philosophy,  London,  1888,  vol.  i,  pp.  231  et  seq.  ;  also  Renan,  Histoire  du 
Peuple  Israel,  vol.  iv,  chap,  iv  ;  also,  for  Philo  Judreus's  part  in  developing  the 
legend,  see  Rev.  Dr.  Sanday's  Bampton  Lectures  for  1893,  on  Inspiration,  pp.  86,  87. 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION.  2QI 

ing,  and  miraculously  perfect  in  form.  From  these  premises 
also  he  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  his  own  sacred  litera- 
ture is  unique  ;  that  no  other  sacred  book  can  have  emanated 
from  a  divine  source ;  and  that  all  others  claiming  to  be 
sacred  are  impostures. 

Still  another  law  governing  the  evolution  of  sacred  litera- 
ture in  every  great  world  religion  is,  that  when  the  books 
which  compose  it  are  once  selected  and  grouped  they  come 
to  be  regarded  as  a  final  creation  from  which  nothing  can  be 
taken  away,  and  of  which  even  error  in  form,  if  sanctioned 
by  tradition,  may  not  be  changed. 

The  working  of  this  law  has  recently  been  seen  on  a  laro-e 
scale. 

A  few  years  since,  a  body  of  chosen  scholars,  universally 
acknowledged  to  be  the  most  fit  for  the  work,  undertook,  at 
the  call  of  English-speaking  Christendom,  to  revise  the  au- 
thorized English  version  of  the  Bible. 

Beautiful  as  was  that  old  version,  there  was  abundant 
reason  for  a  revision.  The  progress  of  biblical  scholarship 
had  revealed  multitudes  of  imperfections  and  not  a  few  gross 
errors  in  the  work  of  the  early  translators,  and  these,  if  un- 
corrected, were  sure  to  bring  the  sacred  volume  into  dis- 
credit. 

Nothing  could  be  more  reverent  than  the  spirit  of  the 
revisers,  and  the  nineteenth  century  has  known  few  histor- 
ical events  of  more  significant  and  touching  beauty  than  the 
participation  in  the  holy  communion  by  all  these  scholars 
— prelates,  presbyters,  ministers,  and  laymen  of  churches 
most  widely  differing  in  belief  and  observance — kneeling 
side  by  side  at  the  little  altar  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Nor  could  any  work  have  been  more  conservative  and 
cautious  than  theirs ;  as  far  as  possible  they  preserved  the 
old  matter  and  form  with  scrupulous  care. 

Yet  their  work  was  no  sooner  done  than  it  was  bitterly 
attacked  and  widely  condemned  ;  to  this  day  it  is  largely 
regarded  with  dislike.  In  Great  Britain,  in  America,  in 
Australia,  the  old  version,  with  its  glaring  misconceptions, 
mistranslations,  and  interpolations,  is  still  read  in  preference 
to  the  new  ;  the  great  body  of  English-speaking  Christians 
clearly  preferring  the  accustomed  form  of  words  given  by 


2Q2  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

the  seventeenth-century  translators,  rather  than  a  nearer  ap- 
proach to. the  exact  teaching  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Still  another  law  is,  that  when  once  a  group  of  sacred 
books  has  been  evolved— even  though  the  group  really  be  a 
great  library  of  most  dissimilar  works,  ranging  in  matter 
from  the  hundredth  Psalm  to  the  Song  of  Songs,  and  in  man- 
ner from  the  sublimity  of  Isaiah  to  the  offhand  story-telling 
of  Jonah— all  come  to  be  thought  one  inseparable  mass  of 
interpenetrating  parts  ;  every  statement  in  each  fitting  ex- 
actly and  miraculously  into  each  statement  in  every  other  ; 
and  each  and  every  one,  and  all  together,  literally  true  to 
fact,  and  at  the  same  time  full  of  hidden  meanings. 

The  working  of  these  and  other  laws  governing  the  evo- 
lution of  sacred  literature  is  very  clearly  seen  in  the  great 
rabbinical  schools  which  flourished  at  Jerusalem,  Tiberias, 
and  elsewhere,  after  the  return  of  the  Jews  from  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity,  and  especially  as  we  approach  the  time  of 
Christ.  These  schools  developed  a  subtlety  in  the  study  of 
the  Old  Testament  which  seems  almost  preternatural.  The 
resultant  system  was  mainly  a  jugglery  with  words,  phrases, 
and  numbers,  which  finally  became  a  "  sacred  science,"  with 
various  recognised  departments,  in  which  interpretation  was 
carried  on  sometimes  by  attaching  a  numerical  value  to  let- 
ters ;  sometimes  by  interchange  of  letters  from  differently 
arranged  alphabets;  sometimes  by  the  making  of  new  texts 
out  of  the  initial  letters  of  the  old  ;  and  with  ever-increasing 
subtlety. 

Such  efforts  as  these  culminated  fitly  in  the  rabbinical 
declaration  that  each  passage  in  the  law  has  seventy  distinct 
meanings,  and  that  God  himself  gives  three  hours  every  day 
to  their  study. 

After  this  the  Jewish  world  was  prepared  for  anything, 
and  it  does  not  surprise  us  to  find  such  discoveries  in  the 
domain  of  ethical  culture  as  the  doctrine  that,  for  inflicting 
the  forty  stripes  save  one  upon  those  who  broke  the  law, 
the  lash  should  be  braided  of  ox-hide  and  ass-hide  ;  and,  as 
warrant  for  this  construction  of  the  lash,  the  text,  "  The  ox 
knoweth  his  owner,  and  the  ass  his  master's  crib,  but  Israel 
doth  not  know  "  ;  and,  as  the  logic  connecting  text  and  lash, 
the  statement  that  Jehovah  evidently  intended  to  command 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION. 


-93 


that  "  the  men  who  know  not  shall  be  beaten  by  those  ani- 
mals whose  knowledge  shames  them." 

By  such  methods  also  were  revealed  such  historical  treas- 
ures as  that  Og,  King  of  Bashan,  escaped  the  deluge  by 
wading  after  Noah's  ark. 

There  were,  indeed,  noble  exceptions  to  this  kind  of 
teaching.  It  can  not  be  forgotten  that  Rabbi  Hillel  formu- 
lated the  golden  rule,  which  had  before  him  been  given  to  the 
extreme  Orient  by  Confucius,  and  which  afterward  received  a 
yet  more  beautiful  and  positive  emphasis  from  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth ;  but  the  seven  rules  of  interpretation  laid  down  by 
Hillel  were  multiplied  and  refined  by  men  like  Rabbi  Ismael 
and  Rabbi  Eleazar  until  they  justified  every  absurd  subtlety.* 

An  eminent  scholar  has.  said  that  while  the  letter  of  Scrip- 
ture became  ossified  in  Palestine,  it  became  volatilized  at 
Alexandria  ;  and  the  truth  of  this  remark  was  proved  by  the 
Alexandrian  Jewish  theologians  just  before  the  beginning  of 
our  era. 

This,  too,  was  in  obedience  to  a  law  of  development, 
which  is,  that  when  literal  interpretation  clashes  with  in- 
creasing knowledge  or  with  progress  in  moral  feeling,  theo- 
logians take  refuge  in  mystic  meanings— a  law  which  we  see 
working  in  all  great  religions,  from  the  Brahmans  finding 
hidden  senses  in  the  Vedas,  to  Plato  and  the  Stoics  finding 
them  in  the  Greek  myths ;  and  from  the  Sofi  reading  new 
meanings  into  the  Koran,  to  eminent  Christian  divines  of 
the  nineteenth  century  giving  a  non-natural  sense  to  some  of 
the  plainest  statements  in  the  Bible. 

Nothing  is  more  natural  than  all  this.  When  naive  state- 
ments of  sacred  writers,  in  accord  with  the  ethics  of  early 
ages,  make  Brahma  perform  atrocities  which  would  disgrace 
a  pirate;  and  Jupiter  take  part  in  adventures  worthy  of 
Don  Juan  ;  and  Jahveh  practise  trickery,  cruelty,  and  high- 
handed injustice  which  would  bring  any  civilized  mortal 
into  the  criminal  courts,  the  invention  of  allegory  is  the  one 


*  For  a  multitude  of  amusing  examples  of  rabbinical  interpretations,  see  an 
article  in  Blackwood's  Magazine  for  November,  1882.  For  a  more  general  discus- 
sion, see  Archdeacon  Farrar's  History  of  Interpretation,  lect.  i  and  ii,  and  Rev. 
Prof.  II.  P.  Smith's  Inspiration  and  Inerrancy,  Cincinnati,  1893,  especially  chap, 
iv  ;  also  Reuss,  History  of  the  New  Testament,  English  translation,  pp.  527.  5?S. 


294 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


means  of  saving  the  divine  authority  as  soon  as  men  reach 
higher  planes  of  civilization. 

The  great  early  master  in  this  evolution  of  allegory,  for 
the  satisfaction  of  Jews  and  Christians,  was  Philo  :  by  him 
its  use  came  in  as  never  before.  The  four  streams  of  the 
garden  of  Eden  thus  become  the  four  virtues  ;  Abraham's 
country  and  kindred,  from  which  he  was  commanded  to  de- 
part, the  human  body  and  its  members  ;  the  five  cities  of 
Sodom,  the  five  senses ;  the  Euphrates,  correction  of  man- 
ners. By  Philo  and  his  compeers  even  the  most  insignifi- 
cant words  and  phrases,  and  those  especially,  were  held  to 
conceal  the  most  precious  meanings. 

A  perfectly  natural  and  logical  result  of  this  view  was 
reached  when  Philo,  saturated  as  he  was  with  Greek  culture 
and  nourished  on  pious  traditions  of  the  utterances  at  Delphi 
and  Dodona,  spoke  reverently  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures  as 
"oracles."  Oracles  they  became:  as  oracles  they  appeared 
in  the  early  history  of  the  Christian  Church  ;  and  oracles  they 
remained  for  centuries:  eternal  life  or  death,  infinite  happi- 
ness or  agony,  as  well  as  ordinary  justice  in  this  world,  being 
made  to  depend  on  shifting  interpretations  of  a  long  series 
of  dark  and  doubtful  utterances — interpretations  frequently 
given  by  men  who  might  have  been  prophets  and  apostles, 
but  who  had  become  simply  oracle-mongers. 

Pressing  these  oracles  into  the  service'  of  science,  Philo 
became  the  forerunner  of  that  long  series  of  theologians 
who,  from  Augustine  and  Cosmas  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  have  at- 
tempted to  extract  from  scriptural  myth  and  legend  profound 
contributions  to  natural  science.  Thus  he  taught  that  the 
golden  candlesticks  in  the  tabernacle  symbolized  the  planets, 
the  high  priest's  robe  the  universe,  and  the  bells  upon  it  the 
harmony  of  earth  and  water — whatever  that  may  mean.  So 
Cosmas  taught,  a  thousand  years  later,  that  the  table  of 
shewbread  in  the  tabernacle  showed  forth  the  form  and  con- 
struction of  the  world  ;  and  Mr.  Gladstone  hinted,  more  than 
a  thousand  years  later  still,  that  Neptune's  trident  had  a  mys- 
terious connection  with  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.* 

*  For  Philo  Judoeus,  see  Yonge's  translation,  Bonn's  edition  ;  see  also  Sanday, 
Inspiration,  pp.  73— S5.     For  admirable  general  remarks  on  this  period  in  the  his- 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION.  2q" 

These  methods,  as  applied  to  the  Old  Testament,  had  ap- 
peared at  times  in  the  New  ;  in  spite  of  the  resistance  of 
Tertullian  and  Irenasus,  they  were  transmitted  to  the  Church  ; 
and  in  the  works  of  the  early  fathers  they  bloomed  forth 
luxuriantly. 

Justin  Martyr  and  Clement  of  Alexandria  vigorously  ex- 
tended them.  Typical  of  Justin's  method  is  his  finding,  in  a 
very  simple  reference  by  Isaiah  to  Damascus,  Samaria,  and 
Assyria,  a  clear  prophecy  of  the  three  wise  men  of  the  East 
who  brought  gifts  to  the  infant  Saviour ;  and  in  the  bells  on 
the  priest's  robe  a  prefiguration  of  the  twelve  apostles.  Any 
difficulty  arising  from  the  fact  that  the  number  of  bells  is 
not  specified  in  Scripture,  Justin  overcame  by  insisting  that 
David  referred  to  this  prefiguration  in  the  nineteenth  Psalm  : 
"  Their  sound  is  gone  out  through  all  the  earth,  and  their 
words  to  the  end  of  the  world." 

Working  in  this  vein,  Clement  of  Alexandria  found  in  the 
form,  dimensions,  and  colour  of  the  Jewish  tabernacle  a 
whole  wealth  of  interpretation — the  altar  of  incense  repre- 
senting the  earth  placed  at  the  centre  of  the  universe ;  the 
high  priest's  robe  the  visible  world  ;  the  jewels  on  the  priest's 
robe  the  zodiac ;  and  Abraham's  three  days'  journey  to 
Mount  Moriah  the  three  stages  of  the  soul  in  its  progress 
toward  the  knowledge  of  God.  Interpreting  the  New  Testa- 
ment, he  lessened  any  difficulties  involved  in  the  miracle  of 
the  barley  loaves  and  fishes  by  suggesting  that  what  it  really 
means  is  that  Jesus  gave  mankind  a  preparatory  training  for 
the  gospel  by  means  of  the  law  and  philosophy  ;  because,  as 
he  says,  barley,  like  the  law,  ripens  sooner  than  wheat,  which 


tory  of  exegesis,  see  Barilett,  Bampton  Lectures,  i8S8,  p.  29.  For  efforts  in  gen- 
eral to  save  the  credit  of  myths  by  allegorical  interpretation,  and  for  those  of  Philo 
in  particular,  see  Drummond,  Philo  Judceus,  London,  1888,  vol.  i,  pp.  iS,  19.  and 
notes.  For  interesting  samples  of  Alexandrian  exegesis  and  for  Philo's  application 
of  the  term  "  oracle  "  to  the  Jewish  Scriptures,  see  Farrar,  History  of  Interpreta- 
tion, p.  147  and  note.  For  his  discovery  of  symbols  of  the  universe  in  the  furniture 
of  the  tabernacle,  see  Drummond,  as  above,  vol.  i,  pp.  269  et  scq.  For  the  general 
subject,  admirably  discussed  from  a  historical  point  of  view,  see  the  Rev.  Edwin 
Hatch,  D.  D.,  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the  Christian  Church, 
Hibbert  Lectures  for  1888,  chap.  iii.  For  Cosmas,  see  my  chapters  on  Geography 
and  Astronomy.  For  Mr.  Gladstone's  view  of  the  connection  between  Neptune's 
trident  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  sec  his  Juvenilis  Mundi. 


296  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

represents  the  gospel ;  and  because,  just  as  fishes  grow  in  the 
waves  of  the  ocean,  so  philosophy  grew  in  the  waves  of  the 
Gentile  world. 

Out  of  reasonings  like  these,  those  who  followed,  espe- 
cially Cosmas,  developed,  as  we  have  seen,  a  complete  theo- 
logical science  of  geography  and  astronomy.* 

But  the  instrument  in  exegesis  which  was  used  with  most 
cogent  force  was  the  occult  significance  of  certain  numbers. 
The  Chaldean  and  Egyptian  researches  of  our  own  time  have 
revealed  the  main  source  of  this  line  of  thought ;  the  specu- 
lations of  Plato  upon  it  are  well  known;  but  among  the 
Jews  and  in  the  early  Church  it  grew  into  something  far  be- 
yond the  wildest  imaginings  of  the  priests  of  Memphis  and 
Babylon. 

Philo  had  found  for  the  elucidation  of  Scripture  espe- 
cially deep  meanings  in  the  numbers  four,  six,  and  seven ; 
but  other  interpreters  soon  surpassed  him.  At  the  very 
outset  this  occult  power  was  used  in  ascertaining  the  can- 
onical books  of  Scripture.  Josephus  argued  that,  since 
there  were  twenty-two  letters  in  the  Hebrew  alphabet, 
there  must  be  twenty-two  sacred  books  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament ;  other  Jewish  authorities  thought  that  there  should 
be  twenty-four  books,  on  account  of  the  twenty  -  four 
watches  in  the  temple.  St.  Jerome  wavered  between  the 
argument  based  upon  the  twenty-two  letters  in  the  He- 
brew alphabet  and  that  suggested  by  the  twenty. four 
elders  in  the  Apocalypse.  Hilary  of  Poitiers  argued  that 
there  must  be  twenty-four  books,  on  account  of  the  twen- 
ty-four letters  in  the  Greek  alphabet.  Origen  found  an 
argument  for  the  existence  of  exactly  four  gospels  in  the 
existence  of  just  four  elements.  Irenreus  insisted  that 
there  could  be  neither  more  nor  fewer  than  four  gospels, 
since  the  earth  has  four  quarters,  the  air  four  winds,  and 
the    cherubim    four   faces  ;    and    he    denounced    those    who 

*  For  Justin,  see  the  Dialogue  with  Trypho,  chaps,  xlii,  lxxvi,  and  lxxxiii. 
For  Clement  of  Alexandria,  see  his  Miscellanies,  book  v,  chaps,  vi  and  xi,  and 
book  vii,  chap,  xvi,  and  especially  Hatch,  Hibbert  Lectures,  as  above,  pp.  76,  77. 
As  to  the  loose  views  of  the  canon  held  by  these  two  fathers  and  others  of  their 
time,  see  Ladd,  Doctrine  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  vol.  ii,  pp.  86,  88  ;  also  Diestel, 
Gesckichte  ties  alien  Testaments. 


THE   OLDER    INTERPRETATION. 


297 


declined  to  accept  this  reasoning  as  "  vain,  ignorant,  and 
audacious."  * 

But  during  the  first  half  of  the  third  century  came  one 
who  exercised  a  still  stronger  influence  in  this  direction — a 
great  man  who,  while  rendering  precious  services,  did  more 
than  any  other  to  fasten  upon  the  Church  a  system  which 
has  been  one  of  its  heaviest  burdens  for  more  than  sixteen 
hundred  years :  this  was  Origen.  Yet  his  purpose  was 
noble  and  his  work  based  on  profound  thought,  lie  had  to 
meet  the  leading  philosophers  of  the  pagan  world,  to  reply 
to  their  arguments  against  the  Old  Testament,  and  especially 
to  break  the  force  of  their  taunts  against  its  imputation  of 
human  form,  limitations,  passions,  weaknesses,  and  even  im- 
moralities to  the  Almighty. 

Starting  with  a  mistaken  translation  of  a  verse  in  the  book 
of  Proverbs,  Origen  presented  as  a  basis  for  his  main  struc- 
ture the  idea  of  a  threefold  sense  of  Scripture  :  the  literal,  the 
moral,  and  the  mystic — corresponding  to  the  Platonic  con- 
ception of  the  threefold  nature  of  man.  As  results  of  this 
we  have  such  masterpieces  as  his  proof,  from  the  fifth  verse 
of  chapter  xxv  of  Job,  that  the  stars  are  living  beings,  and 
from  the  well-known  passage  in  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  St. 
Matthew  his  warrant  for  self-mutilation.  But  his  great  tri- 
umphs were  in  the  allegorical  method.  By  its  use  the  Bible 
was  speedily  made  an  oracle  indeed,  or,  rather,  a  book  of  rid- 
dles. A  list  of  kings  in  the  Old  Testament  thus  becomes  an 
enumeration  of  sins  ;  the  waterpots  of  stone,  "  containing  t  wo 
or  three  firkins  apiece,"  at  the  marriage  of  Cana,  signify  the 
literal,  moral,  and  spiritual  sense  of  Scripture;  the  ass  upon 
which  the  Saviour  rode  on  his  triumphal  entry  into  Jerusalem 
becomes  the  Old  Testament,  the  foal  the  New  Testament,  and 
the  two  apostles  who  went  to  loose  them  the  moral  and  mys- 
tical senses  ;  blind  Bartimeus  throwing  off  his  coat  while  hast- 
ening to  Jesus,  opens  a  whole  treasury  of  oracular  meanings. 


*  For  Jerome  and  Origen,  see  notes  on  pages  following.  For  Irenoeus,  see 
Irensus,  Adversus  Hares.,  lib.  iii,  cap.  xi,  §  8.  For  the  general  subject,  see  San- 
day,  Inspiration,  p.  115  ;  also  Farrar  and  II.  P.  Smith  as  above.  For  a  recent 
very  full  and  very  curious  statement  from  a  Roman  Catholic  authority  regarding 
views  cherished  in  the  older  Church  as  to  the  symbolism  of  numbers,  see  Detzel, 
Christliche  Icono»raphie,  Freiburg  im  Breisgau,  1894,  Band  i,  Einleitung,  p.  4- 


298  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

The  genius  and  power  of  Origen  made  a  great  impression 
on  the  strong  thinkers  who  followed  him.  St.  Jerome  called 
him  "  the  greatest  master  in  the  Church  since  the  apostles," 
and  Athanasius  was  hardly  less  emphatic. 

The  structure  thus  begun  was  continued  by  leading  theo- 
logians during  the  centuries  following:  St.  Hilary  of  Poitiers 
— "the  Athanasius  of  Gaul" — produced  some  wonderful  re- 
sults of  this  method  ;  but  St.  Jerome,  inspired  by  the  exam- 
ple of  the  man  whom  he  so  greatly  admired,  went  beyond 
him.  A  triumph  of  his  exegesis  is  seen  in  his  statement  that 
the  Shunamite  damsel  who  was  selected  to  cherish  David  in 
his  old  age  signified  heavenly  wisdom. 

The  great  mind  of  St.  Augustine  was  drawn  largely  into 
this  kind  of  creation,  and  nothing  marks  more  clearly  the  vast 
change  which  had  come  over  the  world  than  the  fact  that  this 
greatest  of  the  early  Christian  thinkers  turned  from  the 
broader  paths  opened  by  Plato  and  Aristotle  into  that  opened 
by  Clement  of  Alexandria. 

In  the  mystic  power  of  numbers  to  reveal  the  sense  of 
Scripture  Augustine  found  especial  delight.  He  tells  us  that 
there  is  deep  meaning  in  sundry  scriptural  uses  of  the  num- 
ber forty,  and  especially  as  the  number  of  days  required  for 
fasting.  Forty,  he  reminds  us,  is  four  times  ten.  Now,  four, 
he  says,  is  the  number  especially  representing  time,  the  day 
and  the  year  being  each  divided  into  four  parts  ;  while  ten, 
being  made  up  of  three  and  seven,  represents  knowledge  of 
the  Creator  and  creature,  three  referring  to  the  three  per- 
sons in  the  triune  Creator,  and  seven  referring  to  the  three 
elements,  heart,  soul,  and  mind,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
four  elements,  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water,  which  go  to  make 
up  the  creature.  Therefore  this  number  ten,  representing 
knowledge,  being  multiplied  by  four,  representing  time,  ad- 
monishes us  to  live  during  time  according  to  knowledge — 
that  is,  to  fast  for  forty  days. 

Referring  to  such  misty  methods  as  these,  which  lead  the 
reader  to  ask  himself  whether  he  is  sleeping  or  waking,  St. 
Augustine  remarks  that  "  ignorance  of  numbers  prevents  us 
from  understanding  such  things  in  Scripture."  But  perhaps 
the  most  amazing  example  is  to  be  seen  in  his  notes  on  the 
hundred  and  fifty  and  three  fishes  which,  according  to  St. 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION.  299 

John's  Gospel,  were  caught  by  St.  Peter  and  the  other  apos- 
tles. Some  points  in  his  long  development  of  this  subject 
may  be  selected  to  show  what  the  older  theological  method 
could  be  made  to  do  for  a  great  mind.  He  tells  us  that 
the  hundred  and  fifty  and  three  fishes  embody  a  mystery  ; 
that  the  number  ten,  evidently  as  the  number  of  the  com- 
mandments, indicates  the  law  ;  but,  as  the  law  without  the 
spirit  only  kills,  we  must  add  the  seven  gifts  of  the  spirit,  and 
we  thus  have  the  number  seventeen,  which  signifies  the  old 
and  new  dispensations  ;  then,  if  we  add  together  every  sev- 
eral number  which  seventeen  contains  from  one  to  seventeen 
inclusive,  the  result  is  a  hundred  and  fifty  and  three— the 
number  of  the  fishes. 

With  this  sort  of  reasoning  he  finds  profound  meanings 
in  the  number  of  furlongs  mentioned  in  the  sixth  chapter 
of  St.  John.  Referring  to  the  fact  that  the  disciples  had 
rowed  about  "  twenty-five  or  thirty  furlongs,"  he  declares 
that  "  twenty-five  typifies  the  law,  because  it  is  five  times 
five,  but  the  law  was  imperfect  before  the  gospel  came  ; 
now  perfection  is  comprised  in  six,  since  God  in  six  days 
perfected  the  world,  hence  five  is  multiplied  by  six  that  the 
law  may  be  perfected  by  the  gospel,  and  six  times  five  is 
thirty." 

But  Augustine's  exploits  in  exegesis  were  not  all  based 
on  numerals  ;  he  is  sometimes  equally  profound  in  other 
modes.  Thus  he  tells  us  that  the  condemnation  of  the  ser- 
pent to  eat  dust  typifies  the  sin  of  curiosity,  since  in  eating 
dust  he  "  penetrates  the  obscure  and  shadowy  "  ;  and  that 
Noah's  ark  was  "  pitched  within  and  without  with  pitch  " 
to  show  the  safety  of  the  Church  from  the  leaking  in  of 
heresy. 

Still  another  exploit— one  at  which  the  Church  might  well 
have  stood  aghast— was  his  statement  that  the  drunkenness 
of  Noah  prefigured  the  suffering  and  death  of  Christ.  It  is 
but  just  to  say  that  he  was  not  the  original  author  of  this  in- 
terpretation  :  it  had  been  presented  long  before  by  St.  Cyp- 
rian. But  this  was  far  from  Augustine's  worst.  Perhaps 
no  interpretation  of  Scripture  has  ever  led  to  more  cruel  and 
persistent  oppression,  torture,  and  bloodshed  than  his  read- 
ing into  one  of  the  most  beautiful  parables  of  Jesus  of  Naza- 


300  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

reth — into  the  words  "  Compel  them  to  come  in  " — a  warrant 
for  religious  persecution :  of  all  unintended  blasphemies 
since  the  world  began,  possibly  the  most  appalling. 

Another  strong  man  follows  to  fasten  these  methods  on 
the  Church  :  St.  Gregory  the  Great.  In  his  renowned  work 
on  the  book  of  Job,  the  Magna  Moralia,  given  to  the  world 
at  the  end  of  the  sixth  century,  he  lays  great  stress  on  the 
deep  mystical  meanings  of  the  statement  that  Job  had  seven 
sons.  He  thinks  the  seven  sons  typify  the  twelve  apostles, 
for  "  the  apostles  were  selected  through  the  sevenfold  grace 
of  the  Spirit ;  moreover,  twelve  is  produced  from  seven — 
that  is,  the  two  parts  of  seven,  four  and  three,  when  multi- 
plied together  give  twelve."  He  also  finds  deep  significance 
in  the  number  of  the  apostles  ;  this  number  being  evidently 
determined  by  a  multiplication  of  the  number  of  persons  in 
the  Trinity  by  the  number  of  quarters  of  the  globe.  Still,  to 
do  him  justice,  it  must  be  said  that  in  some  parts  of  his  exe- 
gesis the  strong  sense  which  was  one  of  his  most  striking 
characteristics  crops  out  in  a  way  very  refreshing.  Thus, 
referring  to  a  passage  in  the  first  chapter  of  Job,  regarding 
the  oxen  which  were  ploughing  and  the  asses  which  were 
feeding  beside  them,  he  tells  us  pithily  that  these  typify  two 
classes  of  Christians  :  the  oxen,  the  energetic  Christians  who 
do  the  work  of  the  Church  ;  the  asses,  the  lazy  Christians 
who  merely  feed.* 

Thus  began  the  vast  theological  structure  of  oracular 
interpretation  applied  to  the  Bible.  As  we  have  seen,  the 
men  who  prepared  the  ground  for  it  were  the  rabbis  of 
Palestine  and  the   Hellenized  Jews  of  Alexandria  ;  and  the 


*  For  Origen,  see  the  De  Principiis,  book  iv,  chaps,  i-vii  et  seq.,  Crombie's 
translation  ;  also  the  Contra  Celsum,  vol.  vi,  p.  70  ;  vol.  vii,  p.  20,  etc.  ;  also  vari- 
ous citations  in  Farrar.  For  Hilary,  see  his  Tractatus  super  Psalmos,  cap.  ix,  li, 
etc.,  in  Migne,  vol.  ix,  and  De  Trinitate,  lib.  ii,  cap.  ii.  For  Jerome's  interpreta- 
tion of  the  text  relating  to  the  Shunamite  woman,  see  Epist.  lii,  in  Migne,  vol.  xxii, 
pp.  527,  528.  For  Augustine's  use  of  numbers,  see  the  De  Doctrina  Christiana,  lib. 
ii,  cap.  xvi  ;  and  for  the  explanation  of  the  draught  of  fishes,  see  Augustine  in,  In 
Johan.  Evangel.,  tractat.  cxxii  ;  and  on  the  twenty-five  to  thirty  furlongs,  ibid., 
tract,  xxv,  cap.  6  ;  and  for  the  significance  of  the  serpent  eating  dust,  De  Gen.,  lib. 
ii,  c.  18.  For  the  view  that  the  drunkenness  of  Noah  prefigured  the  suffering  of 
Christ,  as  held  by  SS.  Cyprian  and  Augustine,  see  Farrar,  as  above,  pp.  181,  238. 
For  St.  Gregory,  see  the  Magna  Moralia,  lib.  i,  cap.  xiv. 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION.  301 

four  great  men  who  laid  its  foundation  courses  were  Orio-en, 
St.  Augustine,  St.  Jerome,  and  St.  Gregory. 

During  the  ten  centuries  following  the  last  of  these  men 
this  structure  continued  to  rise  steadily  above  the  plain 
meanings  of  Scripture.  The  Christian  world  rejoiced  in  it, 
and  the  few  great  thinkers  who  dared  bring  the  truth  to 
bear  upon  it  were  rejected.  It  did  indeed  seem  at  one 
period  in  the  early  Church  that  a  better  system  might  be 
developed.  The  School  of  Antioch,  especially  as  repre- 
sented by  Chrysostom,  appeared  likely  to  lead  in  this  better 
way,  but  the  dominant  forces  were  too  strong  ;.  the  passion 
for  myth  and  marvel  prevailed  over  the  love  of  real  knowl- 
edge, and  the  reasonings  of  Chrysostom  and  his  compeers 
were  neglected.* 

In  the  ninth  century  came  another  effort  to  present  the 
claims  of  right  reason.  The  first  man  prominent  in  this  was 
St.  Agobard,  Bishop  of  Lyons,  whom  an  eminent  historian 
has  well  called  the  clearest  head  of  his  time.  With  the  same 
insight  which  penetrated  the  fallacies  and  follies  of  image 
worship,  belief  in  witchcraft  persecution,  the  ordeal,  and 
the  judicial  duel,  he  saw  the  futility  of  this  vast  fabric  of  in- 
terpretation, protested  against  the  idea  that  the  Divine 
Spirit  extended  its  inspiration  to  the  mere  words  of  Scrip- 
ture, and  asked  a  question  which  has  resounded  through 
every  generation  since:  "  If  you  once  begin  such  a  system, 
who  can  measure  the  absurdity  which  will  follow  ?  " 

During  the  same  century  another  opponent  of  this  domi- 
nant system  appeared:  John  Scotus  Erigena.  He  con- 
tended that  "reason  and  authority  come  alike  from  the  one 
source  of  Divine  Wisdom  "  ;  that  the  fathers,  great  as 
their  authority  is,  often  contradict  each  other ;  and  that, 
in  last  resort,  reason  must  be  called  in  to  decide  between 
them. 

But  the  evolution  of  unreason  continued  :  Agobard  was 
unheeded,  and  Erigena  placed  under  the  ban  by  two  coun- 
cils— his  work  being  condemned  by  a  synod  as  a  "  Commai- 
tum  Diaboli."     Four  centuries  later  Honorius  III  ordered  it 


*  For  the  work  of  the  School  of  Antioch,  and  especially  of  Chrysostom,  see  the 
eloquent  tribute  to  it  by  Farrar,  as  above. 


302  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

to  be  burned,  as  "  teeming-  with  the  venom  of  hereditary- 
depravity  "  ;  and  finally,  after  eight  centuries,  Pope  Gregory 
XIII  placed  it  on  the  Index,  where,  with  so  many  other 
works  which  have  done  good  service  to  humanity,  it  re- 
mains to  this  day.  Nor  did  Abelard,  who,  three  centuries 
after  Agobard  and  Erigena,  made  an  attempt  in  some  re- 
spects like  theirs,  have  any  better  success  :  his  fate  at  the 
hands  of  St.  Bernard  and  the  Council  of  Sens  the  world 
knows  by  heart.  Far  more  consonant  with  the  spirit  of 
the  universal  Church  was  the  teaching  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury of  the  great  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  conveyed  in  these 
ominous  words,  "  Learn  first  what  is  to  be  believed  " 
{Disce  primo  quod  credendum  est),  meaning  thereby  that  one 
should  first  accept  doctrines,  and  then  find  texts  to  confirm 
them. 

These  principles  being  dominant,  the  accretions  to  the 
enormous  fabric  of  interpretation  went  steadily  on.  Typical 
is  the  fact  that  the  Venerable  Bede  contributed  to  it  the 
doctrine  that,  in  the  text  mentioning  Elkanah  and  his  two 
wives,  Elkanah  means  Christ  and  the  two  wives  the  Syna- 
gogue and  the  Church.  Even  such  men  as  Alfred  the  Great 
and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  were  added  to  the  forces  at  work 
in  building  above  the  sacred  books  this  prodigious  structure 
of  sophistry. 

Perhaps  nothing  shows  more  clearly  the  tenacity  of  the 
old  system  of  interpretation  than  the  sermons  of  Savonarola. 
During  the  last  decade  of  the  fifteenth  century,  just  at  the 
close  of  the  mediaeval  period,  he  was  engaged  in  a  life-and- 
death  struggle  at  Florence.  No  man  ever  preached  more 
powerfully  the  gospel  of  righteousness ;  none  ever  laid 
more  stress  on  conduct ;  even  Luther  was  not  more  zealous 
for  reform  or  more  careless  of  tradition  ;  and  yet  we  find 
the  great  Florentine  apostle  and  martyr  absolutely  tied  fast 
to  the  old  system  of  allegorical  interpretation.  The  auto- 
graph notes  of  his  sermons,  still  preserved  in  his  cell  at  San 
Marco,  show  this  abundantly.  Thus  we  find  him  attaching 
to  the  creation  of  grasses  and  plants  on  the  third  day  an  alle- 
gorical connection  with  the  "  multitude  of  the  elect  "  and 
with  the  "  sound  doctrines  of  the  Church  "  ;  and  to  the  crea- 
tion of  land  animals  on  the  sixth  day  a  similar  relation  to 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION.  30^ 

"the  Jewish  people  "  and  to  "  Christians  given  up  to  things 
earthly."  * 

The  revival  of  learning  in  the  fifteenth  century  seemed 
likely  to  undermine  this  older  structure. 

Then  it  was  that  Lorenzo  Valla  brought  to  bear  on  bib- 
lical research,  for  the  first  time,  the  spirit  of  modern  criti- 
cism. By  truly  scientific  methods  he  proved  the  famous 
"  Letter  of  Christ  to  Abgarus  "  a  forgery  ;  the  "  Donation 
of  Constantine,"  one  of  the  great  foundations  of  the  eccle- 
siastical power  in  temporal  things,  a  fraud ;  and  the  "  Apos- 
tles' Creed  "  a  creation  which  post-dated  the  apostles  by 
several  centuries.  Of  even  more  permanent  influence  was 
his  work  upon  the  New  Testament,  in  which  he  initiated 
the  modern  method  of  comparing  manuscripts  to  find  what 
the  sacred  text  really  is.  At  an  earlier  or  later  period  he 
would  doubtless  have  paid  for  his  temerity  with  his  life  ; 
fortunately,  just  at  that  time  the  ruling  pontiff  and  his  con- 
temporaries cared  much  for  literature  and  little  for  ortho- 
doxy, and  from  their  palaces  he  could  bid  defiance  to  the 
Inquisition. 

While  Valla  thus  initiated  biblical  criticism  south  of  the 
Alps,  a  much  greater  man  began  a  more  fruitful  work  in 
northern  Europe.  Erasmus,  with  his  edition  of  the  New 
Testament,  stands  at  the  source  of  that  great  stream  of  mod- 
ern research  and  thought  which  is  doing  so  much  to  under- 
mine and  dissolve  away  the  vast  fabric  of  patristic  and  scho- 
lastic interpretation. 

Yet  his  efforts  to  purify  the  scriptural  text  seemed  at  first 
to  encounter  insurmountable  difficulties,  and   one  of  these 


*  For  Agobard,  see  the  Liber  adversus  Fredigisum,  cap.  xii  ;  also  Reuter's  Re- 
lig.Aufklarung  im  Mitielalter, yo\.  i,  p.  24  ;  also  Poole,  Illustrations  of  the  History 
of  Medieval  Thought,  London,  1884,  pp.  38  et  seq.  For  Erigena,  see  his  De  Di- 
visione  Natures,  lib.  iv,  cap.  v  ;  also  i,  cap.  Ixvi-lxxi  ;  and  for  general  account,  see 
Ueberweg,  History  of  Philosophy,  New  York,  1871,  vol.  i,  pp.  358  et  seq.  ;  and  for 
the  treatment  of  his  work  by  the  Church,  see  the  edition  of  the  Index  under  Leo 
XIII,  1881.  For  Abelard,  see  the  Sic  et  Non,  Prologue,  Migne,  vol.  clxxviii  ; 
and  on  the  general  subject,  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  iii,  pp.  371-377. 
For  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  see  Erudit.  Didask.,  lib.  vii,  vi,  4.  in  Migne,  clxxvi.  For 
Savonarola's  interpretations,  see  various  references  to  his  preaching  in  Villari's 
Life  of  Savonarola,  English  translation,  London,  1890,  and  especially  the  exceed- 
ingly interesting  table  in  the  appendix  to  vol.  i,  chap   vii. 


304  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

may  stimulate  reflection.  He  had  found,  what  some  others 
had  found  before  him,  that  the  famous  verse  in  the  fifth 
chapter  of  the  First  Epistle  General  of  St.  John,  regarding 
the  "three  witnesses,"  was  an  interpolation.  Careful  re- 
search through  all  the  really  important  early  manuscripts 
showed  that  it  appeared  in  none  of  them.  Even  after  the 
Bible  had  been  corrected,  in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  cen- 
turies, by  Lanfranc,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  by 
Nicholas,  cardinal  and  librarian  of  the  Roman  Church,  "  in 
accordance  with  the  orthodox  faith,"  the  passage  was  still 
wanting  in  the  more  authoritative  Latin  manuscripts.  There 
was  not  the  slightest  tenable  ground  for  believing  in  the 
authenticity  of  the  text ;  on  the  contrary,  it  has  been  dem- 
onstrated that,  after  a  universal  silence  of  the  orthodox 
fathers  of  the  Church,  of  the  ancient  versions  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  of  all  really  important  manuscripts,  the  verse  first 
appeared  in  a  Confession  of  Faith  drawn  up  by  an  obscure 
zealot  toward  the  end  of  the  fifth  century.  In  a  very  mild 
exercise,  then,  of  critical  judgment,  Erasmus  omitted  this 
text  from  the  first  two  editions  of  his  Greek  Testament  as 
evidently  spurious.  A  storm  arose  at  once.  In  England, 
Lee,  afterward  Archbishop  of  York  ;  in  Spain,  Stunica,  one 
of  the  editors  of  the  Complutensian  Polyglot ;  and  in  France, 
Bude,  Syndic  of  the  Sorbonne,  together  with  a  vast  army  of 
monks  in  England  and  on  the  Continent,  attacked  him  fero- 
ciously. He  was  condemned  by  the  University  of  Paris, 
and  various  propositions  of  his  were  declared  to  be  heretical 
and  impious.  Fortunately,  the  worst  persecutors  could  not 
reach  him  ;  otherwise  they  might  have  treated  him  as  they 
treated  his  disciple,  Berquin,  whom  in  1529  they  burned 
at  Paris. 

The  fate  of  this  spurious  text  throws  light  into  the  work- 
ings of  human  nature  in  its  relations  to  sacred  literature. 
Although  Luther  omitted  it  from  his  translation  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  kept  it  out  of  every  copy  published  during 
his  lifetime,  and  although  at  a  later  period  the  most  eminent 
Christian  scholars  showed  that  it  had  no  right  to  a  place  in 
the  Bible,  it  was,  after  Luther's  death,  replaced  in  the  Ger- 
man translation,  and  has  been  incorporated  into  all  impor- 
tant editions  of  it,  save  one,  since  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 


THE   OLDER   INTERPRETATION.  305 

teenth  century.  So  essential  was  it  found  in  maintaining  the 
dominant  theology  that,  despite  the  fact  that  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton, Richard  Porson,  the  nineteenth-century  revisers,  and 
all  other  eminent  authorities  have  rejected  it,  the  Anglican 
Church  still  retains  it  in  its  Lectionary,  and  the  Scotch 
Church  continues  to  use  it  in  the  Westminster  Catechism,  as 
a  main  support  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 

Nor  were  other  new  truths  presented  by  Erasmus  bet- 
ter received.  His  statement  that  "some  of  the  epistles  as- 
cribed to  St.  Paul  are  certainly  not  his,"  which  is  to-day 
universally  acknowledged  as  a  truism,  also  aroused  a  storm. 
For  generations,  then,  his  work  seemed  vain. 

On  the  coming  in  of  the  Reformation  the  great  structure 
of  belief  in  the  literal  and  historical  correctness  of  every 
statement  in  the  Scriptures,  in  the  profound  allegorical 
meanings  of  the  simplest  texts,  and  even  in  the  divine  origin 
of  the  vowel  punctuation,  towered  more  loftily  and  grew 
more  rapidly  than  ever  before.  The  Reformers,  having  cast 
off  the  authority  of  the  Pope  and  of  the  universal  Church,  fell 
back  all  the  more  upon  the  infallibility  of  the  sacred  books. 
The  attitude  of  Luther  toward  this  great  subject  was  char- 
acteristic. As  a  rule,  he  adhered  tenaciously  to  the  literal 
interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  ;  his  argument  against  Coper- 
nicus is  a  fair  example  of  his  reasoning  in  this  respect ;  but, 
with  the  strong  good  sense  which  characterized  him,  he  from 
time  to  time  broke  away  from  the  received  belief.  Thus,  he 
took  the  liberty  of  understanding  certain  passages  in  the 
Old  Testament  in  a  different  sense  from  that  given  them  by 
the  New  Testament,  and  declared  St.  Paul's  allegorical  use 
of  the  story  of  Sarah  and  Hagar  "  too  unsound  to  stand  the 
test."  He  also  emphatically  denied  that  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  was  written  by  St.  Paul,  and  he  did  this  in  the 
exercise  of  a  critical  judgment  upon  internal  evidence.  His 
utterance  as  to  the  Epistle  of  St.  James  became  famous.  He 
announced  to  the  Church  :  "  I  do  not  esteem  this  an  apos- 
tolic epistle  ;  I  will  not  have  it  in  my  Bible  among  the  canon- 
ical books,"  and  he  summed  up  his  opinion  in  his  well-known 
allusion  to  it  as  "  an  epistle  of  straw." 

Emboldened   by  him,  the  gentle   spirit  of  Melanchthon, 
while   usually  taking  the   Bible  very   literally,  at  times  re- 
43 


3o6  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

volted  ;  but  this  was  not  due  to  any  want  of  loyalty  to  the 
old  method  of  interpretation  :  whenever  the  wildest  and  most 
absurd  system  of  exegesis  seemed  necessary  to  support  any 
part  of  the  reformed  doctrine,  Luther  and  Melanchthon  un- 
flinchingly developed  it.  Both  of  them  held  firmly  to  the 
old  dictum  of  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  virtually  that  one  must  first  accept  the  doctrine,  and 
then  find  scriptural  warrant  for  it.  Very  striking  examples 
of  this  were  afforded  in  the  interpretation  by  Luther  and 
Melanchthon  of  certain  alleged  marvels  of  their  time,  and 
one  out  of  several  of  these  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  their 
methods. 

In  1523  Luther  and  Melanchthon  jointly  published  a  work 
under  the  title  Der  Papstesel — interpreting  the  significance  of 
a  strange,  ass-like  monster  which,  according  to  a  popular 
story,  had  been  found  floating  in  the  Tiber  some  time  before. 
This  book  was  illustrated  by  startling  pictures,  and  both  text 
and  pictures  were  devoted  to  proving  that  this  monster  was 
"  a  sign  from  God,"  indicating  the  doom  of  the  papacy. 
This  treatise  by  the  two  great  founders  of  German  Protes- 
tantism pointed  out  that  the  ass's  head  signified  the  Pope 
himself ;  "  for,"  said  they,  "  as  well  as  an  ass's  head  is  suited 
to  a  human  body,  so  well  is  the  Pope  suited  to  be  head  over 
the  Church."  This  argument  was  clinched  by  a  reference 
to  Exodus.  The  right  hand  of  the  monster,  said  to  be  like 
an  elephant's  foot,  they  made  to  signify  the  spiritual  rule  of 
the  Pope,  since  "  with  it  he  tramples  upon  all  the  weak  " : 
this  they  proved  from  the  book  of  Daniel  and  the  Second 
Epistle  to  Timothy.  The  monster's  left  hand,  which  was 
like  the  hand  of  a  man,  they  declared  to  mean  the  Pope's 
secular  rule,  and  they  found  passages  to  support  this  view 
in  Daniel  and  St.  Luke.  The  right  foot,  which  was  like  the 
foot  of  an  ox,  they  declared  to  typify  the  servants  of  the 
spiritual  power ;  and  proved  this  by  a  citation  from  St.  Mat- 
thew. The  left  foot,  like  a  griffin's  claw,  they  made  to  typify 
the  servants  of  the  temporal  power  of  the  Pope,  and  the 
highly  developed  breasts  and  various  other  members,  car- 
dinals, bishops,  priests,  and  monks,  "  whose  life  is  eating, 
drinking,  and  unchastity  "  :  to  prove  this  they  cited  passages 
from  Second  Timothy  and  Philippians.     The  alleged  fish- 


THE    OLDER    INTERPRETATION.  307 

scales  on  the  arms,  legs,  and  neck  of  the  monster  they  made 
to  typify  secular  princes  and  lords  ;  "  since,"  as  they  said,  "  in 
St.  Matthew  and  Job  the  sea  typifies  the  world,  and  fishes 
men."  The  old  man's  head  at  the  base  of  the  monster's  spine 
they  interpreted  to  mean  "  the  abolition  and  end  of  the  pa- 
pacy," and  proved  this  from  Hebrews  and  Daniel.  The 
dragon  which  opens  his  mouth  in  the  rear  and  vomits  fire, 
"  refers  to  the  terrible,  virulent  bulls  and  books  which  the 
Pope  and  his  minions  are  now  vomiting  forth  into  the  world." 
The  two  great  Reformers  then  went  on  to  insist  that,  since 
this  monster  was  found  at  Rome,  it  could  refer  to  no  person 
but  the  Pope  ;  "  for,"  they  said,  "  God  always  sends  his  signs 
in  the  places  where  their  meaning  applies."  Finally,  they 
assured  the  world  that  the  monster  in  general  clearly  signi- 
fied that  the  papacy  was  then  near  its  end.  To  this  develop- 
ment of  interpretation  Luther  and  Melanchthon  especiallv 
devoted  themselves;  the  latter  by  revising  this  exposition  of 
the  prodigy,  and  the  former  by  making  additions  to  a  new 
edition. 

Such  was  the  success  of  this  kind  of  interpretation  that 
Luther,  hearing  that  a  monstrous  calf  had  been  found  at 
Freiburg,  published  a  treatise  upon  it — showing,  by  citations 
from  the  books  of  Exodus,  Kings,  the  Psalms,  Isaiah,  Daniel, 
and  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  that  this  new  monster  was  the 
especial  work  of  the  devil,  but  full  of  meaning  in  regard  to 
the  questions  at  issue  between  the  Reformers  and  the  older 
Church. 

The  other  main  branch  of  the  Reformed  Church  appeared 
for  a  time  to  establish  a  better  system.  Calvin's  strong  logic 
seemed  at  one  period  likely  to  tear  his  adherents  away  from 
the  older  method  ;  but  the  evolution  of  scholasticism  con- 
tinued, and  the  influence  of  the  German  reformers  prevailed. 
At  every  theological  centre  came  an  amazing  development 
of  interpretation.  Eminent  Lutheran  divines  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  like  Gerhard,  Calovius,  Cocceius,  and  mul- 
titudes of  others,  wrote  scores  of  quartos  to  further  this 
system,  and  the  other  branch  of  the  Protestant  Church 
emulated  their  example.  The  pregnant  dictum  of  St.  Augus- 
tine— "  Greater  is  the  authority  of  Scripture  than  all  human 
capacity  " — was  steadily  insisted  upon,  and,  toward  the  close 


OS  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


of  the  seventeenth  century,  Voetius,  the  renowned  professor 
at  Utrecht,  declared,  "  Not  a  word  is  contained  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures  which  is  not  in  the  strictest  sense  inspired,  the 
very  punctuation  not  excepted  "  ;  and  this  declaration  was 
echoed  back  from  multitudes  of  pulpits,  theological  chairs, 
synods,  and  councils.  Unfortunately,  it  was  very  difficult  to 
find  what  the  "authority  of  Scripture  "  really  was.  To  the 
greater  number  of  Protestant  ecclesiastics  it  meant  the  au- 
thority of  any  meaning  in  the  text  which  they  had  the  wit 
to  invent  and  the  power  to  enforce. 

To  increase  this  vast  confusion,  came,  in  the  older  branch 
of  the  Church,  the  idea  of  the  divine  inspiration  of  the 
Latin  translation  of  the  Bible  ascribed  to  St.  Jerome — the 
Vulgate.  It  was  insisted  by  leading  Catholic  authorities 
that  this  was  as  completely  a  product  of  divine  inspiration 
as  was  the  Hebrew  original.  Strong  men  arose  to  insist 
even  that,  where  the  Hebrew  and  the  Latin  differed,  the 
Hebrew  should  be  altered  to  fit  Jerome's  mistranslation,  as 
the  latter,  having  been  made  under  the  new  dispensation, 
must  be  better  than  that  made  under  the  old.  Even  so 
great  a  man  as  Cardinal  Bellarmine  exerted  himself  in  vain 
against  this  new  tide  of  unreason.* 


*  For  Valla,  see  various  sources  already  named  ;  and  for  an  especially  inter- 
esting account,  Symonds's  Renaissance  in  Italy,  The  Revival  of  Learning,  pp.  260- 
269  ;  and  for  the  opinion  of  the  best  contemporary  judge,  see  Erasmus,  Opera, 
Leyden,  1703,  torn,  iii,  p.  98.  For  Erasmus  and  his  opponents,  see  Life  of  Eras- 
mus, by  Butler,  London,  1825,  pp.  179-182  ;  but  especially,  for  the  general  sub- 
ject, Bishop  Creighton's  History  of  the  Papacy  during  the  Reformation.  For  the 
attack  by  Bude  and  the  Sorbonne  and  the  burning  of  Berquin,  see  Drummond, 
Life  and  Character  of  Erasmus,  vol.  ii,  pp.  220-223  ;  also  pp.  230-239.  As  to 
the  text  of  the  Three  Witnesses,  see  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Eall  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  chap,  xxxvii,  notes  116-118  ;  also  Dean  Milman's  note  thereupon.  For 
a  full  and  learned  statement  of  the  evidence  against  the  verse,  see  Porson's 
Letters  to  Travis,  London,  1790,  in  which  an  elaborate  discussion  of  all  the  MSS. 
is  given.  See  also  Jovvett  in  Essays  and  Reviews,  p.  307.  For  a  very  full  and  im- 
partial history  of  the  long  controversy  over  this  passage,  see  Charles  Butler's  Hortz 
Bibliaz,  reprinted  in  Jared  Sparks's  Theological  Essays  and  Tracts,  vol.  ii.  For 
Luther's  ideas  of  interpretation,  see  his  Sammtliche  Schriften,  Walch  edition,  vol. 
i,  p.  1 199,  vol.  ii,  p.  1758,  vol.  viii,  p.  2140  ;  for  some  of  his  more  free  views,  vol. 
xiv,  p.  472,  vol.  vi,  p.  121,  vol.  xi,  p.  1448,  vol.  xii,  p.  830  ;  also  Tholuck,  Doctrine 
of  Inspiration,  Boston,  1867,  citing  the  Colloqnia,  Frankfort,  1571,  vol.  ii,  p.  102  ; 
also  the  Vorreden  zu  der  deutschen  Bibelubersetzung,  in  Walch's  edition,  as  above, 
vol.  xiv,  especially  pp.  94,  98,  and  146-150.     As  to  Melanchthon,  see  especially  his 


THE   OLDER    INTERPRETATION.  -Oo 

Nor  was  a  fanatical  adhesion  to  the  mere  letter  of  the 
sacred  text  confined  to  western  Europe.  About  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  the  reign  of  Alexis,  father  of 
Peter  the  Great,  Nikon,  Patriarch  of  the  Russian  Greek 
Church,  attempted  to  correct  the  Slavonic  Scriptures  and 
service-books.  They  were  full  of  interpolations  due  to  ig- 
norance, carelessness,  or  zeal,  and  in  order  to  remedy  this 
state  of  the  texts  Nikon  procured  a  number  of  the  best 
Greek  and  Slavonic  manuscripts,  set  the  leading  and  most 
devout  scholars  he  could  find  at  work  upon  them,  and 
caused  Russian  Church  councils  in  1655  and  1666  to  promul- 
gate the  books  thus  corrected. 

But  the  same  feelings  which  have  wrought  so  strongly 
against  our  nineteenth-century  revision  of  the  Bible  acted 
even  more  forcibly  against  that  revision  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  Straightway  great  masses  of  the  people,  led  by 
monks  and  parish  priests,  rose  in  revolt.  The  fact  that  the 
revisers  had  written  in  the  New  Testament  the  name  of 
Jesus  correctly,  instead  of  following  the  old  wrong  orthog- 
raphy, aroused  the  wildest  fanaticism.  The  monks  of  the 
great  convent  of  Solovetsk,  when  the  new  books  were  sent 
them,   cried   in  terror :  "  Woe,  woe  !  what  have  you  done 

Loci  Communes,  1521  ;  and  as  to  the  enormous  growth  of  commentaries  in  the 
generations  immediately  following,  see  Charles  Beard,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  18S3, 
on  the  Reformation,  especially  the  admirable  chapter  on  Protestant  Scholasticism  ; 
also  Archdeacon  Farrar,  History  of  Interpretation.  For  the  Papstesel,  etc.,  see 
Luther's  Sdmmtliche  Sc/iri/ten,  edit.  Walch,  vol.  xiv,  pp.  2403  et  sea.  ;  also  Melanch- 
thon's  Opera,  edit.  Bretschneider,  vol.  xx,  pp.  665  et  sea.  In  the  White  Library  of 
Cornell  University  will  be  found  an  original  edition  of  the  book,  with  engravings  of 
the  monster.  For  the  Monchkalb,  see  Luther's  works  as  above,  vol.  xix,  pp.  2416 
et  sea.  For  the  spirit  of  Calvin  in  interpretation,  see  Farrar,  and  especially  H.  P. 
Smith,  D.  D.,  Inspiration  and  Inerrancy,  chap,  iv,  and  the  very  brilliant  essay 
forming  chap,  iii  of  the  same  work,  by  L.  J.  Evans,  pp.  66  and  67,  note.  For  the 
attitude  of  the  older  Church  toward  the  Vulgate,  see  Pallavicini,  Histoire  da  Con- 
cile  de  Trente,  Montrouge,  1844,  tome  i,  pp.  19,  20  ;  but  especially  Symonds,  The 
Catholic  Reaction,  vol.  i,  pp.  226  et  sea.  As  to  a  demand  for  a  revision  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible  to  correct  its  differences  from  the  Vulgate,  see  Emanuel  Deutsch's 
Litera>y  Remains,  New  York,  1874,  p.  9.  For  the  work  and  spirit  of  Calovius 
and  other  commentators  immediately  following  the  Reformation,  see  Farrar,  as 
above  ;  also  Beard,  Schaff,  and  Hertzog,  Geschichte  des  alten  Testaments  in  der 
christlichen  Kirche,  pp.  527  et  sea.  As  to  extreme  views  of  Voetius  and  others, 
see  Tholuck,  as  above.  For  the  Formula  Consensus  Helvetica,  which  in  1675 
affirmed  the  inspiration  of  the  vowel  points,  see  Schaff,  Creeds. 


310  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

with  the  Son  of  God?"  They  then  shut  their  gates,  de/or 
ing  patriarch,  council,  and  Czar,  until,  after  a  struggle  L'My 
ing  seven  years,  their  monastery  was  besieged  and  taken  the 
an  imperial  army.  Hence  arose  the  great  sect  of  the  "  (vas 
Believers,"  lasting  to  this  day,  and  fanatically  devoted  to  5rs, 
corrupt  readings  of  the  old  text.* 

Strange  to  say,  on  the  development  of  Scripture  inter- 
pretation, largely  in  accordance  with  the  old  methods, 
wrought,  about  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  centurv,  Sir 
Isaac  Newton. 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that  from  the  mind  which  produced 
the  Principia,  and  which  broke  through  the  many  time- 
honoured  beliefs  regarding  the  dates  and  formation  of  scrip- 
tural books,  could  have  come  his  discussions  regarding  the 
prophecies  ;  still,  at  various  points  even  in  this  work,  his 
power  appears.  From  internal  evidence  he  not  only  dis- 
carded the  text  of  the  Three  Witnesses,  but  he  decided  that 
the  Pentateuch  must  have  been  made  up  from  several  books  ; 
that  Genesis  was  not  written  until  the  reign  of  Saul ;  that 
the  books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles  were  probably  collected 
by  Ezra  ;  and,  in  a  curious  anticipation  of  modern  criticism, 
that  the  book  of  Psalms  and  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  and 
Daniel  were  each  written  by  various  authors  at  various 
dates.  But  the  old  belief  in  prophecy  as  prediction  was 
too  strong  for  him,  and  we  find  him  applying  his  great 
powers  to  the  relation  of  the  details  given  by  the  prophets 
and  in  the  Apocalypse  to  the  history  of  mankind  since 
unrolled,  and    tracing   from  every    statement    in    prophetic 


*  The  present  writer,  visiting  Moscow  in  the  spring  of  1894,  was  presented  by 
Count  Leo  Tolstoi  to  one  of  the  most  eminent  and  influential  members  of  the  sect 
of  "  Old  Believers,"  which  dates  from  the  reform  of  Nikon.  Nothing  could  ex- 
ceed the  fervor  with  which  this  venerable  man,  standing  in  the  chapel  of  his  superb 
villa,  expatiated  upon  the  horrors  of  making  the  sign  of  the  cross  with  three  fingers 
instead  of  with  two.  His  argument  was  that  the  two  fingers,  as  used  by  the  "  Old 
Believers,"  typify  the  divine  and  human  nature  of  our  Lord,  and  hence  that  the 
use  of  them  is  strictly  correct ;  whereas  signing  with  three  fingers,  representing  the 
blessed  Trinity,  is  "  virtually  to  crucify  all  three  persons  of  the  Godhead  afresh." 
Not  less  cogent  were  his  arguments  regarding  the  immense  value  of  the  old  text  of 
Scripture  as  compared  with  the  new.  For  the  revolt  against  Nikon  and  his  re- 
forms, see  Rambaud,  History  of  Russia,  vol.  i,  pp.  414-416  ;  also  Wallace,  Russia, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  307-309  ;  also  Leroy-Beaulieu,  L 'Empire  des  Tsars,  vol.  iii,  livre  iii. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC   INTERPRETATION.  311 

literature  its  exact  fulfilment  even  in  the  most  minute  par- 
ticulars. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  struc- 
ture of  scriptural  interpretation  had  become  enormous.  It 
seemed  destined  to  hide  forever  the  real  character  of  our 
sacred  literature  and  to  obscure  the  great  light  which  Chris- 
tianity had  brought  into  the  world.  The  Church,  Eastern 
and  Western,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  was  content  to  sit  in 
its  shadow,  and  the  great  divines  of  all  branches  of  the 
Church  reared  every  sort  of  fantastic  buttress  to  strengthen 
or  adorn  it.  It  seemed  to  be  founded  for  eternity  ;  and  yet, 
at  this  very  time  when  it  appeared  the  strongest,  a  current 
of  thought  was  rapidly  dissolving  away  its  foundations,  and 
preparing  that  wreck  and  ruin  of  the  whole  fabric  which  is 
now,  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  going  on  so 
rapidly. 

The  account  of  the  movement  thus  begun  is  next  to  be 
Sfiven.* 


II.   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC   INTERPRETATION. 

At  the  base  of  the  vast  structure  of  the  older  scriptural 
interpretation  were  certain  ideas  regarding  the  first  five 
books  of  the  Old  Testament.  It  was  taken  for  granted  that 
they  had  been  dictated  by  the  Almighty  to  Moses  about  fif- 
teen hundred  years  before  our  era  ;  that  some  parts  of  them, 
indeed,  had  been  written  by  the  corporeal  finger  of  Jehovah, 
and  that  all  parts  gave  not  merely  his  thoughts  but  his  exact 
phraseology.  It  was  also  held,  virtually  by  the  universal 
Church,  that  while  every  narrative  or  statement  in  these 
books  is  a  precise  statement  of  historical  or  scientific  fact, 
yet  that  the  entire  text  contains  vast  hidden  meanings.  Such 
was  the  rule  :  the  exceptions  made  by  a  few  interpreters  here 
and  there  only  confirmed  it.  Even  the  indifference  of  St. 
Jerome  to  the  doctrine  of  Mosaic  authorship  did  not  prevent 
its  ripening  into  a  dogma. 

*  For  Newton's  boldness  in  textual  criticism,  compared  with  his  credulity  a-  to 
the  literal  fulfilment  of  prophecy,   see  his   Observations  upon  the  Propheoi 
Daniel  and  the  Apocalypse  of  St.  John,  in  his  works,  edited  by  Hcrsley,  London, 
1785,  vol.  v,  pp.  297-491. 


312  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

The  book  of  Genesis  was  universally  held  to  be  an  ac- 
count, not  only  divinely  comprehensive  but  miraculously 
exact,  of  the  creation  and  of  the  beginnings  of  life  on  the 
earth ;  an  account  to  which  all  discoveries  in  every  branch 
of  science  must,  under  pains  and  penalties,  be  made  to  con- 
form. In  English-speaking  lands  this  has  lasted  until  our 
own  time :  the  most  eminent  of  recent  English  biologists 
has  told  us  how  in  every  path  of  natural  science  he  has,  at 
some  stage  in  his  career,  come  across  a  barrier  labelled  "  No 
thoroughfare.     Moses." 

A  favourite  subject  of  theological  eloquence  was  the  per- 
fection of  the  Pentateuch,  and  especially  of  Genesis,  not  only 
as  a  record  of  the  past,  but  as  a  revelation  of  the  future. 

The  culmination  of  this  view  in  the  Protestant  Church 
was  the  PansopJiia  Mosaica  of  Pfeiffer,  a  Lutheran  general 
superintendent,  or  bishop,  in  northern  Germany,  near  the  be- 
ginning of  the  seventeenth  century.  He  declared  that  the 
text  of  Genesis  "  must  be  received  strictly  "  ;  that  "  it  con- 
tains all  knowledge,  human  and  divine  "  ;  that  "  twenty-eight 
articles  of  the  Augsburg  Confession  are  to  be  found  in  it  "  ; 
that  "  it  is  an  arsenal  of  arguments  against  all  sects  and  sorts 
of  atheists,  pagans,  Jews,  Turks,  Tartars,  papists,  Calvinists, 
Socinians,  and  Baptists  "  ;  "  the  source  of  all  sciences  and 
arts,  including  law,  medicine,  philosophy,  and  rhetoric  "  ; 
"  the  source  and  essence  of  all  histories  and  of  all  professions, 
trades,  and  works";  "an  exhibition  of  all  virtues  and  vices"; 
"  the  origin  of  all  consolation." 

This  utterance  resounded  through  Germany  from  pulpit 
to  pulpit,  growing  in  strength  and  volume,  until  a  century 
later  it  was  echoed  back  by  Huet,  the  eminent  bishop  and 
commentator  of  France.  He  cited  a  hundred  authors,  sacred 
and  profane,  to  prove  that  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch ;  and 
not  only  this,  but  that  from  the  Jewish  lawgiver  came  the 
heathen  theology — that  Moses  was,  in  fact,  nearly  the  whole 
pagan  pantheon  rolled  into  one,  and  really  the  being  wor- 
shipped under  such  names  as  Bacchus,  Adonis,  and  Apollo.* 


*  For  the  passage  from  Huxley  regarding  Mosaic  barriers  to  modern  thought, 
see  his  Essays,  recently  published.  For  Pfeiffer,  see  Zoeckler,  Theologie  und  Na- 
turwissenschaft,  vol.  i,  pp.  68S,  689.     For  St.  Jerome's  indifference  as  to  the  Mosaic 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION. 


3*3 


About  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century  came,  so  far  as 
the  world  now  knows,  the  first  gainsayer  of  this  general  the- 
ory. Then  it  was  that  Aben  Ezra,  the  greatest  biblical 
scholar  of  the  Middle  Ages,  ventured  very  discreetly  to  call 
attention  to  certain  points  in  the  Pentateuch  incompatible 
with  the  belief  that  the  whole  of  it  had  been  written  by 
Moses  and  handed  down  in  its  original  form.  His  opinion 
was  based  upon  the  well-known  texts  which  have  turned  all 
really  eminent  biblical  scholars  in  the  nineteenth  century 
from  the  old  view  by  showing  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the 
five  books  in  their  present  form  to  be  clearly  disproved  by 
the  books  themselves ;  and,  among  these  texts,  accounts  of 
Moses'  own  death  and  burial,  as  well  as  statements  based  on 
names,  events,  and  conditions  which  only  came  into  being 
asres  after  the  time  of  Moses. 

But  Aben  Ezra  had  evidently  no  aspirations  for  martyr- 
dom ;  he  fathered  the  idea  upon  a  rabbi  of  a  previous  gen- 
eration, and,  having  veiled  his  statement  in  an  enigma, 
added  the  caution,  "  Let  him  who  understands  hold  his 
tongue."  * 

For  about  four  centuries  the  learned  world  followed  the 
prudent  rabbi's  advice,  and  then  two  noted  scholars,  one  of 
them  a  Protestant,  the  other  a  Catholic,  revived  his  idea. 
The  first  of  these,  Carlstadt,  insisted  that  the  authorship  of 
the  Pentateuch  was  unknown  and  unknowable  ;  the  other, 
Andreas  Maes,  expressed  his  opinion  in  terms  which  would 
not  now  offend  the  most  orthodox,  that  the  Pentateuch  had 
been  edited  by  Ezra,  and  had  received  in  the  process  sundry 
divinely  inspired  words  and  phrases  to  clear  the  meaning. 
Both  these  innovators  were  dealt  with  promptly  :  Carlstadt 
was,  for  this  and  other  troublesome  ideas,  suppressed  with 


authorship,  see  the  first  of  the  excellent  Sketches  of  Pentateuch  Criticism,  hy  the 
Rev.  S.  J.  Curtiss,  in  the  Bibliothcca  Sacra  for  January,  1884.  For  Huet,  see  also 
Curtiss,  ibid. 

*  For  the  texts  referred  to  by  Aben  Ezra  as  incompatible  with  the  Mosaic  au- 
thorship of  the  Pentateuch,  see  Meyer,  Gesckichte  der  Exeges  ,  vol  i,  pp.  S5-S8  ;  and 
for  a  pithy  short  account,  Moore's  introduction  to  The  Genesis  of  Genesis,  by  B.  W. 
Bacon,  Hartford,  1893,  p.  23  ;  also  Curtiss,  as  above.  For  a  full  exhibition  of  the 
absolute  incompatibility  of  these  texts  with  the  Mosaic  authorship,  etc.,  see  The 
Higher  Criticism  of  the  Pentateuch,  by  C.  A.  Briggs,  D.  D.,  New  York,  1893,  espe- 
cially chapter  iv  ;  also  Robertson  Smith,  art.  Bible,  in  EncycU  Brit. 


3H 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


the  applause  of  the  Protestant  Church ;  and  the  book  of  Maes 
was  placed  by  the  older  Church  on  the  Index. 

But.  as  we  now  look  back  over  the  Revival  of  Learning, 
the  Age  of  Discovery,  and  the  Reformation,  we  can  see 
clearly  that  powerful  as  the  older  Church  then  was,  and 
powerful  as  the  Reformed  Church  was  to  be,  there  was  at 
work  something  far  more  mighty  than  either  or  than  both  ; 
and  this  was  a  great  law  of  nature — the  law  of  evolution 
through  differentiation.  Obedient  to  this  law  there  now  be- 
gan to  arise,  both  within  the  Church  and  without  it,  a  new 
body  of  scholars — not  so  much  theologians  as  searchers  for 
truth  by  scientific  methods.  Some,  like  Cusa,  were  eccle- 
siastics ;  some,  like  Valla,  Erasmus,  and  the  Scaligers,  were 
not  such  in  any  real  sense  ;  but  whether  in  holy  orders, 
really,  nominally,  or  not  at  all,  they  were,  first  of  all,  literary 
and  scientific  investigators. 

During  the  sixteenth  century  a  strong  impulse  was  given 
to  more  thorough  research  by  several  very  remarkable  tri- 
umphs of  the  critical  method  as  developed  by  this  new  class 
of  men,  and  two  of  these  ought  here  to  receive  attention  on 
account  of  their  influence  upon  the  whole  after  course  of 
human  thought. 

For  many  centuries  the  Decretals  bearing  the  great  name 
of  Isidore  had  been  cherished  as  among  the  most  valued 
muniments  of  the  Church.  They  contained  what  claimed 
to  be  a  mass  of  canons,  letters  of  popes,  decrees  of  councils, 
and  the  like,  from  the  days  of  the  apostles  down  to  the 
eighth  century — all  supporting  at  important  points  the  doc- 
trine, the  discipline,  the  ceremonial,  and  various  high  claims 
of  the  Church  and  its  hierarchy. 

But  in  the  fifteenth  century  that  sturdy  German  thinker, 
Cardinal  Nicholas  of  Cusa,  insisted  on  examining  these  doc- 
uments and  on  applying  to  them  the  same  thorough  research 
and  patient  thought  which  led  him,  even  before  Copernicus, 
to  detect  the  error  of  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy. 

As  a  result,  he  avowed  his  scepticism  regarding  this 
pious  literature ;  other  close  thinkers  followed  him  in  inves- 
tigating it,  and  it  was  soon  found  a  tissue  of  absurd  an- 
achronisms, with  endless  clashing  and  confusion  of  events 
and  persons. 


BEGINNINGS  OF   SCIENTIFIC   INTERPRETATION.  ,,- 

For  a  time  heroic  attempts  were  made  by  Church  author- 
ities to  cover  up  these  facts.  Scholars  revealing  them  were 
frowned  upon,  even  persecuted,  and  their  works  placed  upon 
the  Index ;  scholars  explaining  them  away — the  "apologists" 
or  "  reconcilers  "  of  that  day — were  rewarded  with  Church 
preferment,  one  of  them  securing  for  a  very  feeble  treatise 
a  cardinal's  hat.  But  all  in  vain  ;  these  writings  were  at 
length  acknowledged  by  all  scholars  of  note,  Catholic  and 
Protestant,  to  be  mainly  a  mass  of  devoutly  cunning  for- 
geries. 

While  the  eyes  of  scholars  were  thus  opened  as  never 
before  to  the  skill  of  early  Church  zealots  in  forging  docu- 
ments useful  to  ecclesiasticism,  another  discovery  revealed 
their  equal  skill  in  forging  documents  useful  to  theology. 

For  more  than  a  thousand  years  great  stress  had  been 
laid  by  theologians  upon  the  writings  ascribed  to  Dionysius 
the  Areopagite,  the  Athenian  convert  of  St.  Paul.  Claiming 
to  come  from  one  so  near  the  great  apostle,  they  were  prized 
as  a  most  precious  supplement  to  Holy  Writ.  A  belief 
was  developed  that  when  St.  Paul  had  returned  to  earth, 
after  having  been  "  caught  up  to  the  third  heaven,"  he  had 
revealed  to  Dionysius  the  things  he  had  seen.  Hence  it 
was  that  the  varied  pictures  given  in  these  writings  of  the 
heavenly  hierarchy  and  the  angelic  ministers  of  the  Al- 
mighty took  strong  hold  upon  the  imagination  of  the  uni- 
versal Church  :  their  theological  statements  sank  deeply  into 
the  hearts  and  minds  of  the  Mystics  of  the  twelfth  century 
and  the  Platonists  of  the  fifteenth  ;  and  the  ten  epistles  they 
contained,  addressed  to  St.  John,  to  Titus,  to  Polycarp,  and 
others  of  the  earliest  period,  were  considered  treasures  of 
sacred  history.  An  Emperor  of  the  East  had  sent  these 
writings  to  an  Emperor  of  the  West  as  the  most  precious  of 
imperial  gifts.  Scotus  Erigena  had  translated  them  ;  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas  had  expounded  them  ;  Dante  had  glorified 
them  ;  Albert  the  Great  had  claimed  that  they  were  virtu- 
ally given  by  St.  Paul  and  inspired  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Their  authenticity  was  taken  for  granted  by  fathers,  doctors, 
popes,  councils,  and  the  universal  Church. 

But  now,  in  the  glow  of  the  Renascence,  all  this  treasure 
was  found  to  be  but  dross.     Investigators  in  the  old  Church 


316  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

and  in  the  new  joined  in  proving  that  the  great  mass  of  it 
was  spurious.  To  say  nothing  of  other  evidences,  it  failed 
to  stand  the  simplest  of  all  tests,  for  these  writings  constantly 
presupposed  institutions  and  referred  to  events  of  much 
later  date  than  the  time  of  Dionysius ;  they  were  at  length 
acknowledged  by  all  authorities  worthy  of  the  name,  Catho- 
lic as  well  as  Protestant,  to  be  simply — like  the  Isidorian 
Decretals — pious  frauds. 

Thus  arose  an  atmosphere  of  criticism  very  different  from 
the  atmosphere  of  literary  docility  and  acquiescence  of  the 
"  Ages  of  Faith  "  ;  thus  it  came  that  great  scholars  in  all 
parts  of  Europe  began  to  realize,  as  never  before,  the  part 
which  theological  skill  and  ecclesiastical  zeal  had  taken  in 
the  development  of  spurious  sacred  literature ;  thus  was 
stimulated  a  new  energy  in  research  into  all  ancient  docu- 
ments, no  matter  what  their  claims. 

To  strengthen  this  feeling  and  to  intensify  the  stimulat- 
ing qualities  of  this  new  atmosphere  came,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  researches  and  revelations  of  Valla  regarding  the  forged 
Letter  of  Christ  to  Abgarus,  the  fraudulent  Donation  of  Const  an- 
tine,  and  the  late  date  of  the  Apostles'  Creed  ;  and,  to  give 
this  feeling  direction  toward  the  Hebrew  and  Christian 
sacred  books,  came  the  example  of  Erasmus.* 

Naturally,  then,  in  this  new  atmosphere  the  bolder  schol- 
ars of  Europe  soon  began  to  push  more  vigorously  the  re- 
searches begun  centuries  before  by  Aben  Ezra,  and  the  next 
efforts  of  these  men  were  seen  about  the  middle  of  the  sev- 

*  For  very  fair  statements  regarding  the  great  forged  documents  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  see  Addis  and  Arnold,  Catholic  Dictionary,  articles  Dionysius  the  Areopagite 
and  False  Decretals,  and  in  the  latter  the  curious  acknowledgment  that  the  mass 
of  pseudo-Isidorian  Decretals  "is  what  we  now  call  a  forgery." 

For  the  derivation  of  Dionysius's  ideas  from  St.  Paul,  and  for  the  idea  of  inspi- 
ration attributed  to  him,  see  Albertus  Magnus,  Opera  Omnia,  vol.  xiii,  early  chap- 
ters and  chap.  vi.  For  very  interesting  details  on  this  general  subject,  see  Dollin- 
ger,  Das  Papstthum,  chap,  ii ;  also  his  Fables  respecting  the  Popes  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  translation  by  Plummer  and  H.  B.  Smith,  part  i,  chap.  v.  Of  the  exposure  of 
these  works,  see  Farrar,  as  above,  pp.  254,  255  ;  also  Beard,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp. 
4,  354.  For  the  False  Decretals,  see  Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol. 
ii,  pp.  373  et  sea.  For  the  great  work  of  the  pseudo-Dionysius,  see  ibid.,  vol.  iii, 
p.  352,  and  vol.  vi,  pp.  402  et  sea.,  and  Canon  Westcott's  article  on  Dionysius  the 
Areopagite  in  vol.  v  of  the  Contemporary  Review  ;  also  the  chapter  on  Astronomy  in 
this  work. 


BEGINNINGS  OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION.         317 

enteenth  century,  when  Hobbes,  in  his  Leviathan,  and  La 
Peyrere,  in  his  Preadamites,  took  them  up  and  developed 
them  still  further.  The  result  came  speedily.  Hobbes, 
for  this  and  other  sins,  was  put  under  the  ban,  even  by  the 
political  party  which  sorely  needed  him,  and  was  regarded 
generally  as  an  outcast  ;  while  La  Peyrere,  for  this  and  other 
heresies,  was  thrown  into  prison  by  the  Grand  Vicar  of* 
Mechlin,  and  kept  there  until  he  fully  retracted  :  his  book 
was  refuted  by  seven  theologians  within  a  year  after  its  ap- 
pearance, and  within  a  generation  thirty-six  elaborate  an- 
swers to  it  had  appeared  :  the  Parliament  of  Paris  ordered 
it  to  be  burned  by  the  hangman. 

In   1670  came  an  utterance  vastly  more  important,  by  a 
man  far  greater  than  any  of  these — the  Tractatus  Thcologico- 
Politicus  of  Spinoza.     Reverently  but  firmly  he  went  much 
more  deeply  into  the  subject.     Suggesting  new  arguments 
and  recasting  the  old,  he  summed  up  all  with  judicial  fair- 
ness, and  showed  that  Moses  could  not  have  been  the  author 
of  the  Pentateuch  in  the  form  then  existing  ;  that  there  had 
been  glosses  and  revisions;  that  the  biblical  books  had  grown 
up  as  a  literature  ;  that,  though  great  truths  are  to  be  found 
in  them,  and  they  are  to  be  regarded  as  a  divine  revelation, 
the  old  claims  of  inerrancy  for  them  can  not  be  maintained  ; 
that  in  studying  them  men  had  been  misled  by  mistaking 
human  conceptions  for  divine  meanings  ;  that,  while  prophets 
have  been  inspired,  the  prophetic  faculty  has  not  been  the 
dowry  of  the  Jewish  people  alone  ;  that  to  look  for  exact 
knowledge  of  natural  and  spiritual  phenomena  in  the  sacred 
books  is  an  utter  mistake  ;  and  that  the  narratives  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  while  they  surpass  those  of  profane 
history,  differ  among  themselves  not  only  in  literary  merit, 
but  in  the  value  of  the  doctrines  they  inculcate.     As  to  the 
authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  he  arrived  at  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  written  long  after  Moses,  but  that  Moses  may 
have  written  some  books  from  which  it  was  compiled— as, 
for  example,  those  which  are  mentioned  in  the  Scriptures, 
the  Book  of  the  Wars  of  God,  the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  and 
the  like— and  that  the  many  repetitions  and  contradictions  in 
the  various  books  show  a  lack  of  careful  editing  as  well  as  a 
variety  of  original  sources.     Spinoza  then  went  on  to  throw 


3  18  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

light  into  some  other  books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
and  added  two  general  statements  which  have  proved  ex- 
ceedingly serviceable,  for  they  contain  the  germs  of  all  mod- 
ern broad  churchmanship  ;  and  the  first  of  them  gave  the  for- 
mula which  was  destined  in  our  own  time  to  save  to  the 
Anglican  Church  a  large  number  of  her  noblest  sons:  this 
was,  that  "  sacred  Scripture  contains  the  Word  of  God,  and 
in  so  far  as  it  contains  it  is  incorruptible  "  ;  the  second  was, 
that  "  error  in  speculative  doctrine  is  not  impious." 

Though  published  in  various  editions,  the  book  seemed 
to  produce  little  effect  upon  the  world  at  that  time  ;  but  its 
result  to  Spinoza  himself  was  none  the  less  serious.  Though 
so  deeply  religious  that  Novalis  spoke  of  him  as  "  a  God-in- 
toxicated man,"  and  Schleiermacher  called  him  a  "  saint," 
he  had  been,  for  the  earlier  expression  of  some  of  the  opinions 
it  contained,  abhorred  as  a  heretic  both  by  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians :  from  the  synagogue  he  was  cut  off  by  a  public  curse, 
and  by  the  Church  he  was  now  regarded  as  in  some  sort  a 
forerunner  of  Antichrist.  For  all  this,  he  showed  no  resent- 
ment, but  devoted  himself  quietly  to  his  studies,  and  to  the 
simple  manual  labour  by  which  he  supported  himself;  de- 
clined all  proffered  honours,  among  them  a  professorship  at 
Heidelberg  ;  found  pleasure  only  in  the  society  of  a  few 
friends  as  gentle  and  affectionate  as  himself;  and  died  con- 
tentedly, without  seeing  any  widespread  effect  of  his  doc- 
trine other  than  the  prevailing  abhorrence  of  himself. 

Perhaps  in  all  the  seventeenth  century  there  was  no  man 
whom  Jesus  of  Nazareth  would  have  more  deeply  loved,  and 
no  life  which  he  would  have  more  warmly  approved  ;  yet 
down  to  a  very  recent  period  this  hatred  for  Spinoza  has  con- 
tinued. When,  about  1880,  it  was  proposed  to  erect  a  monu- 
ment to  him  at  Amsterdam,  discourses  were  given  in  churches 
and  synagogues  prophesying  the  wrath  of  Heaven  upon  the 
city  for  such  a  profanation ;  and  when  the  monument  was 
finished,  the  police  were  obliged  to  exert  themselves  to  pre- 
vent injury  to  the  statue  and  to  the  eminent  scholars  who 
unveiled  it. 

But  the  ideas  of  Spinoza  at  last  secured  recognition. 
They  had  sunk  deeply  into  the  hearts  and  minds  of  various 
leaders  of  thought,  and,  most  important  of  all,  into  the  heart 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION. 


319 


and  mind  of  Lessing  ;  he  brought  them  to  bear  in  his  treatise 
on  the  Education  of  the  World,  as  well  as  in  his  drama,  Nathan 
the  Wise,  and  both  these  works  have  spoken  with  power  to 
every  generation  since. 

In  France,  also,  came  the  same  healthful  evolution  of 
thought.  For  generations  scholars  had  known  that  multi- 
tudes of  errors  had  crept  into  the  sacred  text.  Robert  Ste- 
phens had  found  over  two  thousand  variations  in  the  oldest 
manuscripts  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  in  1633  Jean  Morin, 
a  priest  of  the  Oratory,  pointed  out  clearly  many  of  the  most 
glaring  of  these.  Seventeen  years  later,  in  spite  of  the  most 
earnest  Protestant  efforts  to  suppress  his  work,  Cappellus 
gave  forth  his  Critica  Sacra,  demonstrating  not  only  that  the 
vowel  pointing  of  Scripture  was  not  divinely  inspired,  but 
that  the  Hebrew  text  itself,  from  which  the  modern  transla- 
tions were  made,  is  full  of  errors  due  to  the  carelessness,  ig- 
norance, and  doctrinal  zeal  of  early  scribes,  and  that  there 
had  clearly  been  no  miraculous  preservation  of  the  "  original 
autographs  "  of  the  sacred  books. 

While  orthodox  France  was  under  the  uneasiness  and 
alarm  thus  caused,  appeared  a  Critical  History  of  the  Old 
Testament  by  Richard  Simon,  a  priest  of  the  Oratory.  He 
was  a  thoroughly  religious  man  and  an  acute  scholar,  whose 
whole  purpose  was  to  develop  truths  which  he  believed 
healthful  to  the  Church  and  to  mankind.  But  he  denied  that 
Moses  was  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  exhibited  the 
internal  evidence,  now  so  well  known,  that  the  books  were 
composed  much  later  by  various  persons,  and  edited  later 
still.  He  also  showed  that  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament 
had  been  compiled  from  older  sources,  and  attacked  the  time- 
honoured  theory  that  Hebrew  was  the  primitive  language  of 
mankind.  The  whole  character  of  his  book  was  such  that  in 
these  clays  it  would  pass,  on  the  whole,  as  conservative  and 
orthodox;  it  had  been  approved  by  the  censor  in  1678,  and 
printed,  when  the  table  of  contents  and  a  page  of  the  preface 
were  shown  to  Bossuet.  The  great  bishop  and  theologian 
was  instantly  aroused  ;  he  pronounced  the  work  "  a  mass  of 
impieties  and  a  bulwark  of  irreligion  "  ;  his  biographer  tells 
us  that,  although  it  was  Holy  Thursday,  the  bishop,  in  spite 
of  the  solemnity  of  the  day,  hastened  at  once  to  the  Chancel- 


320  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

lor  Le  Tellier,  and  secured  an  order  to  stop  the  publication  of 
the  book  and  to  burn  the  whole  edition  of  it.  Fortunately,  a 
few  copies  were  rescued,  and  a  few  years  later  the  work  found 
a  new  publisher  in  Holland  ;  yet  not  until  there  had  been  at- 
tached to  it,  evidently  by  some  Protestant  divine  of  authority, 
an  essay  warning  the  reader  against  its  dangerous  doctrines. 
Two  years  later  a  translation  was  published  in  England. 

This  first  work  of  Simon  was  followed  by  others,  in  which 
he  sought,  in  the  interest  of  scriptural  truth,  to  throw  a  new 
and  purer  light  upon  our  sacred  literature ;  but  Bossuet 
proved  implacable.  Although  unable  to  suppress  all  of 
Simon's  works,  he  was  able  to  drive  him  from  the  Oratory, 
and  to  bring  him  into  disrepute  among  the  very  men  who 
ought  to  have  been  proud  of  him  as  Frenchmen  and  thank- 
ful to  him  as  Christians. 

But  other  scholars  of  eminence  were  now  working  in 
this  field,  and  chief  among  them  Le  Clerc.  Virtually  driven 
out  of  Geneva,  he  took  refuge  at  Amsterdam,  and  there  pub- 
lished a  series  of  works  upon  the  Hebrew  language,  the  in- 
terpretation of  Scripture,  and  the  like.  In  these  he  com- 
bated the  prevalent  idea  that  Hebrew  was  the  primitive 
tongue,  expressed  the  opinion  that  in  the  plural  form  of  the 
word  used  in  Genesis  for  God,  "  Elohim,"  there  is  a  trace  of 
Chaldean  polytheism,  and,  in  his  discussion  on  the  serpent 
who  tempted  Eve,  curiously  anticipated  modern  geological 
and  zoological  ideas  by  quietly  confessing  his  inability  to 
see  how  depriving  the  serpent  of  feet  and  compelling  him  to 
go  on  his  belly  could  be  punishment — since  all  this  was  natu- 
ral to  the  animal.  He  also  ventured  quasi-scientific  explana- 
tions of  the  confusion  of  tongues  at  Babel,  the  destruction  of 
Sodom,  the  conversion  of  Lot's  wife  into  a  pillar  of  salt,  and 
the  dividing  of  the  Red  Sea.  As  to  the  Pentateuch  in  gen- 
eral, he  completely  rejected  the  idea  that  it  was  written  by 
Moses.  But  his  most  permanent  gift  to  the  thinking  world 
was  his  answer  to  those  who  insisted  upon  the  reference  by 
Christ  and  his  apostles  to  Moses  as  the  author  of  the  Penta- 
teuch. The  answer  became  a  formula  which  has  proved 
effective  from  his  day  to  ours :  "  Our  Lord  and  his  apostles 
did  not  come  into  this  wrorld  to  teach  criticism  to  the  Jews, 
and  hence  spoke  according  to  the  common  opinion." 


BEGINNINGS   OF    SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION. 


321 


Against  all  these  scholars  came  a  theological  storm,  but 
it  raged  most  pitilessly  against  Le  Clerc.  Such  renowned 
theologians  as  Carpzov  in  Germany,  Witsius  in  Holland,  and 
Huet  in  France  berated  him  unmercifully  and  overwhelmed 
him  with  assertions  which  still  fill  us  with  wonder.  That  of 
Huet,  attributing  the  origin  of  pagan  as  well  as  Christian 
theology  to  Moses,  we  have  already  seen ;  but  Carpzov 
showed  that  Protestantism  could  not  be  outdone  by  Catholi- 
cism when  he  declared,  in  the  face  of  all  modern  knowledge, 
that  not  only  the  matter  but  the  exact  form  and  words  of 
the  Bible  had  been  divinely  transmitted  to  the  modern  world 
free  from  all  error. 

At  this  Le  Clerc  stood  aghast,  and  finally  stammered  out 
a  sort  of  half  recantation.* 

During  the  eighteenth  century  constant  additions  were 

*  For  Carlstadt,  and  Luther's  dealings  with  him  on  various  accounts,  see  Meyer, 
Geschickte  der  Exegese,  vol.  ii,  pp.  373,  397.  As  to  the  value  of  Maes's  work  in 
general,  see  Meyer,  vol.  ii,  p.  125  ;  and  as  to  the  sort  of  work  in  question,  ibid., 
vol.  iii,  p.  245,  note.  For  Carlstadt,  see  also  Farrar,  History  of  Interpretation,  and 
Moore's  introduction,  as  above.  For  Hobbes's  view  that  the  Pentateuch  was  writ- 
ten long  after  Moses's  day,  see  the  Leviathan,  vol.  iii,  p.  33.  For  La  Peyrere's 
view,  see  especially  his  Prce-Adamita-,  lib.  iv,  chap,  ii,  also  lib.  ii,  passim  ;  also 
Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  i,  p.  294  ;  also  interesting  points  in  Bayle's  Dic- 
tionary. For  Spinoza's  view,  see  the  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus,  chaps,  ii  and 
iii,  and  for  the  persecution,  see  the  various  biographies.  Details  regarding  the 
demonstration  against  the  unveiling  of  his  statue  were  given  to  the  present  writer 
at  the  time  by  Berthold  Auerbach,  who  took  part  in  the  ceremony.  For  Morinus 
and  Cappellus,  see  Farrar,  as  above,  p.  387  and  note.  For  Richard  Simon,  see  his 
Histoire  Critique  de  VAncien  Testament,  liv.  i,  chaps,  ii,  iii,  iv,  v,  and  xiii.  For  his 
denial  of  the  prevailing  theory  regarding  Hebrew,  see  liv.  i,  chap.  xiv.  For  Mori- 
nus (Morin)  and  his  work,  see  the  Biog.  Univ.  and  Nouvclle  Biog.  Gen&ale;  also 
Curtiss.  For  Bossuet's  opposition  to  Simon,  see  the  Histoire  de  Bossuet  in  the 
(Euvres  de  Bossuet,  Paris,  1846,  tome  xii,  pp.  330,  33*  I  also  t.  x,  p.  738  ;  also  sun- 
dry attacks  in  various  volumes.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  among  the  chief 
instigators  of  the  persecution  were  the  Port-Royalists,  upon  whose  persecution 
afterward  by  the  Jesuits  so  much  sympathy  has  been  lavished  by  the  Protestant 
world.  For  Le  Clerc,  see  especially  his  Pentateuehus,  Prolegom.,  dissertat.  i  ; 
also  Com.  in  Genes.,  cap.  vi-viii.  For  a  translation  of  selected  passages  on  the 
points  noted,  see  Twelve  Dissertations  out  of  Monsieur  Le  Clerc' s  Genesis,  done  out 
of  Latin  by  Mr.  Brown,  London,  1696  ;  also  Le  Clerc's  Sentiments  de  Quelques 
Theohgiens  de  LTollande,  passim  ;  also  his  work  on  Inspiration,  English  translation, 
Boston,  1820,  pp.  47-50,  also  57-67.  For  Witsius  and  Carpzov,  see  Curtis,  as 
above.  For  some  subordinate  points  in  the  earlier  growth  of  the  opinion  at 
present  dominant,  see  Briggs,  The  Higher  Criticism  of  the  HexaUuch,  New  York, 
1893,  chap.  iv. 
49 


322 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


made  to  the  enormous  structure  of  orthodox  scriptural  in- 
terpretation, some  of  them  gaining  the  applause  of  the  Chris- 
tian world  then,  though  nearly  all  are  utterly  discredited 
now.  But  in  1753  appeared  two  contributions  of  permanent 
influence,  though  differing  vastly  in  value.  In  the  compara- 
tive estimate  of  these  two  works  the  world  has  seen  a  re- 
markable reversal  of  public  opinion. 

The  first  of  these  was  Bishop  Lowth's  Prelections  upon  the 
Sacred  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews.  In  this  was  well  brought  out 
that  characteristic  of  Hebrew  poetry  to  which  it  owes  so 
much  of  its  peculiar  charm — its  parallelism. 

The  second  of  these  books  was  Astruc's  Conjectures  on 
the  Original  Memoirs  which  Moses  used  in  composing  the  Book 
of  Genesis.  In  this  was  for  the  first  time  clearly  revealed 
the  fact  that,  amid  various  fragments  of  old  writings,  at 
least  two  main  narratives  enter  into  the  composition  of  Gene- 
sis ;  that  in  the  first  of  these  is  generally  used  as  an  appella- 
tion of  the  Almighty  the  word  "  Elohim,"  and  in  the  second 
the  word  "  Yahveh  "  (Jehovah) ;  that  each  narrative  has  char- 
acteristics of  its  own,  in  thought  and  expression,  which  dis- 
tinguish it  from  the  other  ;  that,  by  separating  these,  two 
clear  and  distinct  narratives  may  be  obtained,  each  consistent 
with  itself,  and  that  thus,  and  thus  alone,  can  be  explained 
the  repetitions,  discrepancies,  and  contradictions  in  Genesis 
which  so  long  baffled  the  ingenuity  of  commentators,  espe- 
cially the  two  accounts  of  the  creation,  so  utterly  incon- 
sistent with  each  other. 

Interesting  as  was  Lowth's  book,  this  work  by  Astruc 
was,  as  the  thinking  world  now  acknowledges,  infinitely 
more  important;  it  was,  indeed,  the  most  valuable  single 
contribution  ever  made  to  biblical  study.  But  such  was  not 
the  judgment  of  the  world  then.  While  Lowth's  book  was 
covered  with  honour  and  its  author  promoted  from  the 
bishopric  of  St.  David's  to  that  of  London,  and  even  offered 
the  primacy,  Astruc  and  his  book  were  covered  with  re- 
proach. Though,  as  an  orthodox  Catholic,  he  had  mainly 
desired  to  reassert  the  authorship  of  Moses  against  the  argu- 
ment of  Spinoza,  he  received  no  thanks  on  that  account. 
Theologians  of  all  creeds  sneered  at  him  as  a  doctor  of  medi- 
cine who  had  blundered  beyond  his  province  ;  his  fellow- 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION. 

Catholics  in  France  bitterly  denounced  him  as  a  heretic  ;  and 
in  Germany  the  great  Protestant  theologian,  Michaelis,  who 
had  edited  and  exalted  Lovvth's  work,  poured  contempt  over 
Astruc  as  an  ignoramus. 

The  case  of  Astruc  is  one  of  the  many  which  show  the 
wonderful  power  of  the  older  theological  reasoning  to  close 
the  strongest  minds  against  the  clearest  truths.  The  fa<  t 
which  he  discovered  is  now  as  definitely  established  as  any 
in  the  whole  range  of  literature  or  science.  It  has  become 
as  clear  as  the  day,  and  yet  for  two  thousand  years  the  minds 
of  professional  theologians,  Jewish  and  Christian,  were  un- 
able to  detect  it.  Not  until  this  eminent  physician  applied 
to  the  subject  a  mind  trained  in  making  scientific  distinctions 
was  it  given  to  the  world. 

It  was,  of  course,  not  possible  even  for  so  eminent  a 
scholar  as  Michaelis  to  pooh-pooh  down  a  discovery  so  preg- 
nant ;  and,  curiously  enough,  it  was  one  of  Michaelis's  own 
scholars,  Eichhorn,  who  did  the  main  work  in  bringing  the 
new  truth  to  bear  upon  the  world.  He,  with  others,  devel- 
oped out  of  it  the  theory  that  Genesis,  and  indeed  the  Pen- 
tateuch, is  made  up  entirely  of  fragments  of  old  writings, 
mainly  disjointed.  But  they  did  far  more  than  this:  they 
impressed  upon  the  thinking  part  of  Christendom  the  fact 
that  the  Bible  is  not  a  book,  but  a  literature ;  that  the  style  is 
not  supernatural  and  unique,  but  simply  the  Oriental  style 
of  the  lands  and  times  in  which  its  various  parts  were  writ- 
ten ;  and  that  these  must  be  studied  in  the  light  of  the  modes 
of  thought  and  statement  and  the  literary  habits  generally 
of  Oriental  peoples.  From  Eichhorn's  time  the  process 
which,  by  historical,  philological,  and  textual  research,  brings 
out  the  truth  regarding  this  literature  has  been  known  as 
"  the  higher  criticism." 

He  was  a  deeply  religious  man,  and  the  mainspring  of 
his  efforts  was  the  desire  to  bring  back  to  the  Church  the 
educated  classes,  who  had  been  repelled  by  the  stiff  Lutheran 
orthodoxy  ;  but  this  only  increased  hostility  to  him.  Oppo- 
sition met  him  in  Germany  at  every  turn  ;  and  in  England, 
Lloyd,  Regius  Professor  of  Hebrew  at  Cambridge,  who 
sought  patronage  for  a  translation  of  Eichhorn's  work,  was 
met  generally  with  contempt  and  frequently  with  insult. 


324  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

Throughout  Catholic  Germany  it  was  even  worse.  In 
1774  Isenbiehl,  a  priest  at  Mayence  who  had  distinguished 
himself  as  a  Greek  and  Hebrew  scholar,  happened  to  question 
the  usual  interpretation  of  the  passage  in  Isaiah  which  refers 
to  the  virgin-born  Immanuel,  and  showed  then — what  every 
competent  critic  knows  now— that  it  had  reference  to  events 
looked  for  in  older  Jewish  history.  The  censorship  and  fac- 
ulty of  theology  attacked  him  at  once  and  brought  him  be- 
fore the  elector.  Luckily,  this  potentate  was  one  of  the  old 
easy-going  prince-bishops,  and  contented  himself  with  telling 
the  priest  that,  though  his  contention  was  perhaps  true,  he 
"  must  remain  in  the  old  paths,  and  avoid  everything  likely 
to  make  trouble." 

But  at  the  elector's  death,  soon  afterward,  the  theologians 
renewed  the  attack,  threw  Isenbiehl  out  of  his  professorship 
and  degraded  him.  One  insult  deserves  mention  for  its  in- 
genuity. It  was  declared  that  he — the  successful  and  bril- 
liant professor — showed  by  the  obnoxious  interpretation  that 
he  had  not  yet  rightly  learned  the  Scriptures ;  he  was  there- 
fore sent  back  to  the  benches  of  the  theological  school,  and 
made  to  take  his  seat  among  the  ingenuous  youth  who  were 
conning  the  rudiments  of  theology. 

At  this  he  made  a  new  statement,  so  carefully  guarded 
that  it  disarmed  many  of  his  enemies,  and  his  high  scholar- 
ship soon  won  for  him  a  new  professorship  of  Greek — the 
condition  being  that  he  should  cease  writing  upon  Scripture. 
But  a  crafty  bookseller  having  republished  his  former  book, 
and  having  protected  himself  by  keeping  the  place  and  date 
of  publication  secret,  a  new  storm  fell  upon  the  author ;  he 
was  again  removed  from  his  professorship  and  thrown  into 
prison ;  his  book  was  forbidden,  and  all  copies  of  it  in  that 
part  of  Germany  were  confiscated. 

In  1778,  having  escaped  from  prison,  he  sought  refuge 
with  another  of  the  minor  rulers  who  in  blissful  uncon- 
sciousness were  doing  their  worst  while  awaiting  the  French 
Revolution,  but  was  at  once  delivered  up  to  the  Mayence 
authorities  and  again  thrown  into  prison. 

The  Pope,  Pius  VI,  now  intervened  with  a  brief  on  Isen- 
biehl's  book,  declaring  it  "  horrible,  false,  perverse,  destruc- 
tive, tainted   with  heresy,"  and   excommunicating  all  who 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC   INTERPRETATION.  --$ 

should  read  it.  At  this,  Isenbiehl,  declaring  that  he  had 
written  it  in  the  hope  of  doing-  a  service  to  the  Church, 
recanted,  and  vegetated  in  obscurity  until  his  death  in 
1818. 

But,  despite  theological  faculties,  prince-bishops,  and  even 
popes,  the  new  current  of  thought  increased  in  strength  and 
volume,  and  into  it  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
came  important  contributions  from  two  sources  widely  sepa- 
rated and  most  dissimilar. 

The  first  of  these,  which  gave  a  stimulus  not  yet  exhausted, 
was  the  work  of  Herder.  By  a  remarkable  intuition  he  had 
anticipated  some  of  those  ideas  of  an  evolutionary  process 
in  nature  and  in  literature  which  first  gained  full  recognition 
nearly  three  quarters  of  a  century  after  him  ;  but  his  great- 
est service  in  the  field  of  biblical  study  was  his  work,  at  once 
profound  and  brilliant,  The  Spirit  of  Hebrew  Poetry.  In  this 
field  he  eclipsed  Bishop  Lowth.  Among  other  things  of 
importance,  he  showed  that  the  Psalms  were  by  different  au- 
thors and  of  different  periods — the  bloom  of  a  great  poetic 
literature.  Until  his  time  no  one  had  so  clearly  done  justice 
to  their  sublimity  and  beauty ;  but  most  striking  of  all  was 
his  discussion  of  Solomon's  Song.  For  over  twenty  centuries 
it  had  been  customary  to  attribute  to  it  mystical  meanings. 
If  here  and  there  some  man  saw  the  truth,  he  was  careful, 
like  Aben  Ezra,  to  speak  with  bated  breath. 

The  penalty  for  any  more  honest  interpretation  was  seen, 
among  Protestants,  when  Calvin  and  Beza  persecuted  Cas- 
tellio,  covered  him  with  obloquy,  and  finally  drove  him  to 
starvation  and  death,  for  throwing  light  upon  the  real  char- 
acter of  the  Song  of  Songs;  and  among  Catholics  it  was  seen 
when  Philip  II  allowed  the  pious  and  gifted  Luis  de  Leon, 
for  a  similar  offence,  to  be  thrown  into  a  dungeon  of  the  In- 
quisition and  kept  there  for  five  years,  until  his  health  was 
utterly  shattered  and  his  spirit  so  broken  that  he  consented 
to  publish  a  new  commentary  on  the  song,  "  as  theological 
and  obscure  as  the  most  orthodox  could  desire." 

Here,  too,  we  have  an  example  of  the  efficiency  of  the  older 
biblical  theology  in  fettering  the  stronger  minds  and  in  stu- 
pefying the  weaker.  Just  as  the  book  of  Genesis  had  to  wait 
over  two  thousand  years  for  a  physician  to  reveal  the  sim- 


326  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

plest  fact  regarding  its  structure,  so  the  Song  of  Songs  had  to 
wait  even/longer  for  a  poet  to  reveal  not  only  its  beauty  but 
its  character.  Commentators  innumerable  had  interpreted 
it ;  St.  Bernard  had  preached  over  eighty  sermons  on  its 
first  two  chapters ;  Palestrina  had  set  its  most  erotic  parts 
to  sacred  music ;  Jews  and  Gentiles,  Catholics  and  Protes- 
tants, from  Origen  to  Aben  Ezra  and  from  Luther  to  Bos- 
suet,  had  uncovered  its  deep  meanings  and  had  demonstrated 
it  to  be  anything  and  everything  save  that  which  it  really  is. 
Among  scores  of  these  strange  imaginations  it  was  declared 
to  represent  the  love  of  Jehovah  for  Israel ;  the  love  of 
Christ  for  the  Church  ;  the  praises  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  ; 
the  union  of  the  soul  with  the  body  ;  sacred  history  from 
the  Exodus  to  the  Messiah  ;  Church  history  from  the  Cruci- 
fixion to  the  Reformation  ;  and  some  of  the  more  acute 
Protestant  divines  found  in  it  references  even  to  the  religious 
wars  in  Germany  and  to  the  Peace  of  Passau.  In  these  days 
it  seems  hard  to  imagine  how  really  competent  reasoners 
could  thus  argue  without  laughing  in  each  other's  faces,  after 
the  manner  of  Cicero's  augurs.  Herder  showed  Solomon's 
Song  to  be  what  the  whole  thinking  world  now  knows  it  to 
be — simply  an  Oriental  love-poem. 

But  his  frankness  brought  him  into  trouble :  he  was  bit- 
terly assailed.  Neither  his  noble  character  nor  his  genius 
availed  him.  Obliged  to  flee  from  one  pastorate  to  another, 
he  at  last  found  a  happy  refuge  at  Weimar  in  the  society  of 
Goethe,  Wieland,  and  Jean  Paul,  and  thence  he  exercised  a 
powerful  influence  in  removing  noxious  and  parasitic  growths 
from  religious  thought. 

It  would  hardly  be  possible  to  imagine  a  man  more  dif- 
ferent from  Herder  than  was  the  other  of  the  two  who  most 
influenced  biblical  interpretation  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  This  was  Alexander  Geddes — a  Roman  Catholic 
priest  and  a  Scotchman.  Having  at  an  early  period  at- 
tracted much  attention  by  his  scholarship,  and  having  re- 
ceived the  very  rare  distinction,  for  a  Catholic,  of  a  doctor- 
ate from  the  University  of  Aberdeen,  he  began  publishing 
in  1792  a  new  translation  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  followed 
this  in  1800  with  a  volume  of  critical  remarks.  In  these  he 
supported  mainly  three  views :  first,  that  the  Pentateuch  in 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION. 


r-i 


its  present  form  could  not  have  been  written  by  Moses  ;  sec- 
ondly, that  it  was  the  work  of  various  hands;  and,  thirdly, 
that  it  could  not  have  been  written  before  the  time  of 
David.  Although  there  was  a  fringe  of  doubtful  theories 
about  them,  these  main  conclusions,  supported  as  they  were 
by  deep  research  and  cogent  reasoning,  are  now  recog- 
nised as  of  great  value.  But  such  was  not  the  orthodox 
opinion  then.  Though  a  man  of  sincere  piety,  who  through- 
out his  entire  life  remained  firm  in  the  faith  of  his  fathers, 
he  and  his  work  were  at  once  condemned  :  he  was  sus- 
pended by  the  Catholic  authorities  as  a  misbeliever,  de- 
nounced by  Protestants  as  an  infidel,  and  taunted  by  both  as 
"a  would-be  corrector  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  Of  course,  by 
this  taunt  was  meant  nothing  more  than  that  he  dissented 
from  sundry  ideas  inherited  from  less  enlightened  times  by 
the  men  who  just  then  happened  to  wield  ecclesiastical 
power. 

But  not  all  the  opposition  to  him  could  check  the  evolu- 
tion of  his  thought.     A  line  of  great  men  followed   in  these 
paths  opened  by  Astruc  and  Eichhorn,  and  broadened  by 
Herder  and  Geddes.     Of  these  was  De  Wette,  whose  various 
works,  especially  his  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament,  gave 
a  new  impulse  early  in  the  nineteenth  century  to  fruitful 
thought  throughout  Christendom.     In  these  writings,  while 
showing  how  largely  myths  and  legends  had  entered  into 
the  Hebrew  sacred  books,  he  threw  especial  light  into  the 
books  Deuteronomy  and  Chronicles.    The  former  he  showed 
to  be,  in  the  main,  a  late  priestly  summary  of  law,  and  the 
latter  a  very  late  priestly  recast  of  early  history.     He  had, 
indeed,  to  pay  a  penalty  for  thus  aiding  the  world  in   its 
march  toward   more  truth,   for  he  was  driven  out  of  Ger- 
many, and  obliged  to  take  refuge  in  a  Swiss  professorship  ; 
while  Theodore  Parker,  who  published  an  English  transla- 
tion of  his  work,  was,  for  this  and  similar  sins,  virtually  re- 
jected by  what  claimed  to  be  the  most  liberal  of  all  Christian 
bodies  in  the  United  States. 

But  contributions  to  the  new  thought  continued  from 
quarters  whence  least  was  expected.  Gesenius,  by  his  He- 
brew Grammar,  and  Ewald,  by  his  historical  studies,  greatly 
advanced  it. 


328  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

To  them  and  to  all  like  them  during-  the  middle  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century  was  sturdily  opposed  the  colossus 
of  orthodoxy — Hengstenberg.  In  him  was  combined  the 
haughtiness  of  a  Prussian  drill-sergeant,  the  zeal  of  a  Span- 
ish inquisitor,  and  the  flippant  brutality  of  a  French  ortho- 
dox journalist.  Behind  him  stood  the  gifted  but  erratic 
Frederick  William  IV — a  man  admirably  fitted  for  a  profess- 
orship of  aesthetics,  but  whom  an  inscrutable  fate  had  made 
Kins:  of  Prussia.  Both  these  rulers  in  the  German  Israel 
arrayed  all  possible  opposition  against  the  great  scholars 
labouring  in  the  new  paths  ;  but  this  opposition  was  vain  : 
the  succession  of  acute  and  honest  scholars  continued : 
Vatke,  Bleek,  Reuss,  Graf,  Kayser,  Hupfeld,  Delitzsch, 
Kuenen,  and  others  wrought  on  in  Germany  and  Holland, 
steadily  developing  the  new  truth. 

Especially  to  be  mentioned  among-  these  is  Hupfeld,  who 
published  in  1853  his  treatise  on  The  Sources  of  Genesis. 
Accepting  the  Conjectures  which  Astruc  had  published  just 
a  hundred  years  before,  he  established  what  has  ever  since 
been  recognised  by  the  leading  biblical  commentators  as  the 
true  basis  of  work  upon  the  Pentateuch — the  fact  that  three 
true  documents  are  combined  in  Genesis,  each  with  its  own 
characteristics.  He,  too,  had  to  pay  a  price  for  letting  more 
light  upon  the  world.  A  determined  attempt  was  made  to 
punish  him.  Though  deeply  religious  in  his  nature  and 
aspirations,  he  was  denounced  in  1865  to  the  Prussian  Gov- 
ernment as  guilty  of  irreverence  ;  but,  to  the  credit  of  his 
noble  and  true  colleagues  who  trod  in  the  more  orthodox 
paths — men  like  Tholuck  and  Julius  Muller — the  theological 
faculty  of  the  University  of  Halle  protested  against  this  per- 
secuting effort,  and  it  was  brought  to  naught. 

The  demonstrations  of  Hupfeld  gave  new  life  to  bibli- 
cal scholarship  in  all  lands.  More  and  more  clear  became 
the  evidence  that  throughout  the  Pentateuch,  and  indeed  in 
other  parts  of  our  sacred  books,  there  had  been  a  fusion  of 
various  ideas,  a  confounding  of  various  epochs,  and  a  com- 
pilation of  various  documents.  Thus  was  opened  a  new  field 
of  thought  and  work:  in  sifting  out  this  literature;  in  re- 
arranging it ;  and  in  bringing  it  into  proper  connection  with 
the  history  of  the  Jewish  race  and  of  humanity. 


BEGINNINGS  OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION.         329 

Astruc  and  Hupfeld  having-  thus  found  a  key  to  the  true 
character  of  the  "Mosaic"  Scriptures,  a  second  key  was 
found  which  opened  the  way  to  the  secret  of  order  in  all 
this  chaos.  For  many  generations  one  thing  had  especially 
puzzled  commentators  and  given  rise  to  masses  of  futile 
"reconciliation":  this  was  the  patent  fact  that  such  men  as 
Samuel,  David,  Elijah,  Isaiah,  and  indeed  the  whole  Jewish 
people  down  to  the  Exile,  showed  in  all  their  utterances  and 
actions  that  they  were  utterly  ignorant  of  that  vast  system 
of  ceremonial  law  which,  according  to  the  accounts  attrib- 
uted to  Moses  and  other  parts  of  our  sacred  books,  was  in 
full  force  during  their  time  and  during  nearly  a  thousand 
years  before  the  Exile.  It  was  held  "  always,  everywhere, 
and  by  all,"  that  in  the  Old  Testament  the  chronological 
order  of  revelation  was  :  first,  the  law  ;  secondly,  the  Psalms  ; 
thirdly,  the  prophets.  This  belief  continued  unchallenged 
during  more  than  two  thousand  years,  and  until  after  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Yet,  as  far  back  as  1835,  Vatke  at  Berlin  had,  in  his  Re- 
ligion of  the  Old  Testament,  expressed  his  conviction  that  this 
belief  was  unfounded.  Reasoning  that  Jewish  thought  must 
have  been  subject  to  the  laws  of  development  which  govern 
other  systems,  he  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  legisla- 
tion ascribed  to  Moses,  and  especially  the  elaborate  para- 
phernalia and  composite  ceremonies  of  the  ritual,  could  not 
have  come  into  being  at  a  period  so  rude  as  that  depicted  in 
the  "  Mosaic  "  accounts. 

Although  Vatke  wrapped  this  statement  in  a  mist  of 
Hegelian  metaphysics,  a  sufficient  number  of  watchmen  on 
the  walls  of  the  Prussian  Zion  saw  its  meaning,  and  an 
alarm  was  given.  The  chroniclers  tell  us  that  "  fear  of 
failing  in  the  examinations,  through  knowing  too  much, 
kept  students  away  from  Vatke's  lectures."  Naturally, 
while  Hengstenberg  and  Frederick  William  IV  were  com- 
manding the  forces  of  orthodoxy,  Vatke  thought  it  wise  to 
be  silent. 

Still,  the  new  idea  was  in  the  air ;  indeed,  it  had  been 
divined  about  a  year  earlier,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Rhine, 
by  a  scholar  well  known  as  acute  and  thoughtful— Reuss,  of 
Strasburg.     Unfortunately,  he    too  was   overawed,  and    he 


330  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

refrained  from  publishing  his  thought  during  more  than  forty 
years.  But  his  ideas  were  caught  by  some  of  his  most  gifted 
scholars ;  and,  of  these,  Graf  and  Kayser  developed  them 
and  had  the  courage  to  publish  them. 

At  the  same  period  this  new  master  key  was  found  and 
applied  by  a  greater  man  than  any  of  these — by  Kuenen,  of 
Holland  ;  and  thus  it  was  that  three  eminent  scholars,  work- 
ing in  different  parts  of  Europe  and  on  different  lines,  in 
spite  of  all  obstacles,  joined  in  enforcing  upon  the  thinking 
world  the  conviction  that  the  complete  Levitical  law  had 
been  established  not  at  the  beginning,  but  at  the  end,  of  the 
Jewish  nation — mainly,  indeed,  after  the  Jewish  nation  as  an 
independent  political  body  had  ceased  to  exist ;  that  this 
code  had  not  been  revealed  in  the  childhood  of  Israel,  but 
that  it  had  come  into  being  in  a  perfectly  natural  way  dur- 
ing Israel's  final  decay — during  the  period  when  heroes  and 
prophets  had  been  succeeded  by  priests.  Thus  was  the  his- 
torical and  psychological  evolution  of  Jewish  institutions 
brought  into  harmony  with  the  natural  development  of  hu- 
man thought ;  elaborate  ceremonial  institutions  being  shown 
to  have  come  after  the  ruder  beginnings  of  religious  devel- 
opment instead  of  before  them.  Thus  came  a  new  impulse 
to  research,  and  the  fruitage  was  abundant ;  the  older  theo- 
logical interpretation,  with  its  insoluble  puzzles,  yielded  on 
all  sides. 

The  lead  in  the  new  epoch  thus  opened  was  taken  bv 
Kuenen.  Starting  with  strong  prepossessions  in  favour  of 
the  older  thought,  and  even  with  violent  utterances  asrainst 
some  of  the  supporters  of  the  new  view,  he  was  borne  on  by 
his  love  of  truth,  until  his  great  work,  The  Religion  of  Israel, 
published  in  1869,  attracted  the  attention  of  thinking  schol- 
ars throughout  the  world  by  its  arguments  in  favour  of  the 
upward  movement.  From  him  now  came  a  third  master 
key  to  the  mystery ;  for  he  showed  that  the  true  opening 
point  for  research  into  the  history  and  literature  of  Israel 
is  to  be  found  in  the  utterances  of  the  great  prophets  of 
the  eighth  century  before  our  era.  Starting  from  these,  he 
opened  new  paths  into  the  periods  preceding  and  following 
them.  Recognising  the  fact  that  the  religion  of  Israel  was, 
like  other  great  world  religions,  a  development  of  higher 


BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENTIFIC    INTERPRETATION. 


;^i 


ideas  out  of  lower,  he  led  men  to  bring  deeper  thinking  and 
wider  research  into  the  great  problem.  With  ample  learn- 
ing and  irresistible  logic  he  proved  that  Old  Testament  his- 
tory is  largely  mingled  with  myth  and  legend  ;  that  not  only 
were  the  laws  attributed  to  Moses  in  the  main  a  far  later 
development,  but  that  much  of  their  historical  setting  was 
an  afterthought ;  also  that  Old  Testament  prophecy  was 
never  supernaturally  predictive,  and  least  of  all  predictive 
of  events  recorded  in  the  New  Testament.  Thus  it  was  that 
his  genius  gave  to  the  thinking  world  a  new  point  of  view, 
and  a  masterly  exhibition  of  the  true  method  of  study.  Justly 
has  one  of  the  most  eminent  divines  of  the  contemporary 
Anglican  Church  indorsed  the  statement  of  another  eminent 
scholar,  that  "  Kuenen  stood  upon  his  watch-tower,  as  it 
were  the  conscience  of  Old  Testament  science  "  ;  that  his 
work  is  characterized  "  not  merely  by  fine  scholarship, 
critical  insight,  historical  sense,  and  a  religious  nature,  but 
also  by  an  incorruptible  conscientiousness,  and  a  majestic 
devotion  to  the  quest  of  truth." 

Thus  was  established  the  science  of  biblical  criticism. 
And  now  the  question  was,  whether  the  Church  of  northern 
Germany  would  accept  this  great  gift — the  fruit  of  centuries 
of  devoted  toil  and  self-sacrifice — and  take  the  lead  of  Chris- 
tendom in  and  by  it. 

The  great  curse  of  Theology  and  Ecclesiasticism  has 
always  been  their  tendency  to  sacrifice  large  interests  to 
small — Charity  to  Creed,  Unity  to  Uniformity,  Fact  to  Tra- 
dition, Ethics  to  Dogma.  And  now  there  were  symptoms 
throughout  the  governing  bodies  of  the  Reformed  churches 
indicating  a  determination  to  sacrifice  leadership  in  this  new 
thought  to  ease  in  orthodoxy.  Every  revelation  of  new 
knowledge  encountered  outcry,  opposition,  and  repression  ; 
and,  what  was  worse,  the  ill-judged  declarations  of  some  un- 
wise workers  in  the  critical  field  were  seized  upon  and  used 
to  discredit  all  fruitful  research.  Fortunately,  a  man  now 
appeared  who  both  met  all  this  opposition  successfully,  and 
put  aside  all  the  half  truths  or  specious  untruths  urged  by 
minor  critics  whose  zeal  outran  their  discretion.  This 
was  a  great  constructive  scholar — not  a  destrover,  but  a 
builder — YVellhausen.     Reverently,  but  honestly  and  cour- 


332  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

ageously,  with  clearness,  fulness,  and  convicting  force,  he 
summed  up  the  conquests  of  scientific  criticism  as  bearing 
on  Hebrew  history  and  literature.  These  conquests  had 
reduced  the  vast  structures  which  theologians  had  during 
ages  been  erecting  over  the  sacred  text  to  shapeless  ruin  and 
rubbish  :  this  rubbish  he  removed,  and  brought  out  from 
beneath  it  the  reality.  He  showed  Jewish  history  as  an 
evolution  obedient  to  laws  at  work  in  all  ages,  and  Jewish 
literature  as  a  growth  out  of  individual,  tribal,  and  national 
life.  Thus  was  our  sacred  history  and  literature  given  a 
beauty  and  high  use  which  had  long  been  foreign  to  them. 
Thereby  was  a  vast  service  rendered  immediately  to  Ger- 
many, and  eventually  to  all  mankind  ;  and  this  service  was 
greatest  of  all  in  the  domain  of  religion.* 


*  For  Lowth,  see  the  Rev.  T.  K.  Cheyne,  D.  D.,  Professor  of  the  Interpretation 
of  the  Holy  Scripture  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  Founders  of  Old  Testament 
Criticism,  London,  1893,  pp.  3,  4.  For  Astruc's  very  high  character  as  a  medical 
authority,  see  the  Dictionnaire  des  Sciences  Medicates,  Paris,  1820  ;  it  is  significant 
that  at  first  he  concealed  his  authorship  of  the  Conjectures.  For  a  brief  statement, 
see  Cheyne  ;  also  Moore's  introduction  to  Bacon's  Genesis  of  Genesis ;  but  for  a 
statement  remarkably  full  and  interesting,  and  based  on  knowledge  at  first  hand  of 
Astruc's  very  rare  book,  see  Curtiss,  as  above.  For  Michaelis  and  Eichhorn,  see 
Meyer,  Geschichte  der  Exegese ;  also  Cheyne  and  Moore.  For  Isenbiehl,  see 
Reusch,  in  Allg.  deutsche  Biographie.  The  texts  cited  against  him  were  Isaiah 
vii,  14,  and  Matt,  i,  22,  23.  For  Herder,  see  various  historians  of  literature  and 
writers  on  exegesis,  and  especially  Pfleiderer,  Development  of  Theology  in  Ger- 
many, chap.  ii.  For  his  influence,  as  well  as  that  of  Lessing,  see  Beard's  Hibbert 
Lectures,  chap.  x.  For  a  brief  comparison  of  Lowth's  work  with  that  of  Herder, 
see  Farrar,  History  of  Interpretation,  p.  377.  For  examples  of  interpretations  of 
the  Song  of  Songs,  see  Farrar,  as  above,  p.  33.  For  Castellio  (Chatillon),  his  an- 
ticipation of  Herder's  view  of  Solomon's  Song,  and  his  persecution  by  Calvin  and 
Beza,  which  drove  him  to  starvation  and  death,  see  Lecky,  Rationalism,  etc.,  vol. 
ii,  pp.  46-48  ;  also  Bayle's  Dictionary,  article  Castalio  ;  also  Montaigne's  Essais, 
liv.  i,  chap,  xxxiv  ;  and  especially  the  new  life  of  him  by  Buisson.  For  the  per- 
secution of  Luis  de  Leon  for  a  similar  offence,  see  Ticknor,  History  of  Spanish 
Literature,  vol.  ii,  pp.  41,  42,  and  note.  For  a  remarkably  frank  acceptance  of  the 
consequences  flowing  from  Herder's  view  of  it,  see  Sanday,  Inspiration,  pp.  211, 
405.  For  Geddes,  see  Cheyne,  as  above.  For  De  Wette  and  contemporaries,  see 
Meyer,  Cheyne,  Pfleiderer,  and  others,  as  above.  For  Theodore  Parker,  see  his 
various  biographies,  passim.  For  Reuss,  Graf,  and  Kuenen,  see  Cheyne,  as  above  ; 
and  for  the  citations  referred  to,  see  the  Rev.  Dr.  Driver,  Regius  Professor  of 
Hebrew  at  Oxford,  in  The  Academy,  October  27,  1894  ;  also  a  note  to  Well- 
hausen's  article  Pentateuch,  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  For  a  generous  yet 
weighty  tribute  to  Kuenen's  method,  see  Pfleiderer,  as  above,  book  iii,  chap.  ii. 
For  the  view  of  leading  Christian  critics  on  the  book  of  Chronicles,  see  especially 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC  INTERPRETATION.   ^^ 

III.  THE    CONTINUED   GROWTH    OF   SCIENTIFIC 

INTERPRETATION. 

The  science  of  biblical  criticism   was,  as   we   have  seen, 
first   developed    mainly   in   Germany   and    Holland.     Many 
considerations  there,  as  elsewhere,  combined  to  deter  men 
from  opening  new  paths  to  truth  :  not  even  in  those  coun- 
tries were  these  the  paths  to  preferment;  but  there,  at  least, 
the  sturdy  Teutonic  love  of  truth  for  truth's  sake,  strength- 
ened by  the  Kantian  ethics,  found  no  such  obstacles  as  in 
other  parts  of   Europe.     Fair  investigation  of  biblical  sub- 
jects had  not  there  been  extirpated,  as  in   Italy  and  Spain  ; 
nor  had  it  been  forced  into  channels  which  led  nowhither, 
as  in  France  and  southern  Germany  ;  nor  were  men  who 
might  otherwise  have  pursued  it  dazzled  and  drawn  away 
from  it  by  the  multitude  of  splendid  prizes  for  plausibility, 
for  sophistry,  or  for  silence  displayed  before  the  ecclesias- 
tical vision  in  England.     In  the  frugal  homes  of  North  Ger- 
man  and   Dutch   professors  and   pastors  high   thinking  on 
these  great  subjects  went  steadily  on,  and   the  "  liberty  of 
teaching,"  which  is  the  glory  of  the  northern  Continental 
universities,  while  it  did  not  secure  honest  thinkers  against 
vexations,  did  at  least  protect  them  against  the  persecutions 
which  in  other  countries  would  have  thwarted  their  studies 
and  starved  their  families.* 

In  England  the  admission  of  the  new  current  of  thought 
was  apparently  impossible.  The  traditional  system  of  bib- 
lical interpretation  seemed  established  on  British   soil  for- 


Driver,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Old  Testament,  pp.  495  *  sea.  ;  also 
Wellhausen,  as  above  ;  also  Hooykaas,  Oort,  and  Kuenen,  Bible  for  Learners. 
For  many  of  the  foregoing,  see  also  the  writings  of  Prof.  W.  Robertson  Smith  ; 
also  Beard's  Hibbert  Lectures,  chap.  x.  For  Hupfeld  and  his  discovery,  see 
Cheyne,  Founders,  etc.,  as  above,  chap,  vii  ;  also  Moore's  Introduction.  For  a 
justly  indignant  judgment  of  Hengstenberg  and  his  school,  see  Canon  Farrar,  as 
above  p.  417,  note  ;  and  for  a  few  words  throwing  a  bright  light  into  his  char- 
acter and  career,  see  C.  A.  Briggs,  D.  D.,  Authority  of  Holy  Scripture,  p.  93.  For 
Wellhausen,  see  Pfleiderer,  as  above,  book  iii,  chap.  ii.  For  an  excellent  popular 
statement  of  the  general  results  of  German  criticism,  see  J.  T.  Sunderland,  The 
Bible:  Its  Origin,  Growth,  and  Character.  New  York  and  London,  1893. 

*  As  to  the  influence  of  Kant  on  honest  thought  in  Germany,  see  Pfleiderer,  as 
above,  chap.  i. 


334  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

ever.  It  was  knit  into  the  whole  fabric  of  thought  and 
observance  ;  it  was  protected  by  the  most  justly  esteemed 
hierarchy  the  world  has  ever  seen  ;  it  was  intrenched  be- 
hind the  bishops'  palaces,  the  cathedral  stalls,  the  professors' 
chairs,  the  country  parsonages— all  these,  as  a  rule,  the  seats 
of  high  endeavour  and  beautiful  culture.  The  older  thought 
held  a  controlling  voice  in  the  senate  of  the  nation  ;  it  was 
dear  to  the  hearts  of  all  classes  ;  it  was  superbly  endowed  ; 
every  strong  thinker  seemed  to  hold  a  brief,  or  to  be  in 
receipt  of  a  retaining  fee  for  it.  As  to  preferment  in  the 
Church,  there  was  a  cynical  aphorism  current,  "  He  may 
hold  anything  who  will  hold  his  tongue."* 

Yet,  while  there  was  inevitably  much  alloy  of  worldly 
wisdom  in  the  opposition  to  the  new  thought,  no  just  thinker 
can  deny  far  higher  motives  to  many,  perhaps  to  most,  of 
the  ecclesiastics  who  were  resolute  against  it.  The  evan- 
gelical movement  incarnate  in  the  Wesleys  had  not  spent  its 
strength  ;  the  movement  begun  by  Pusey,  Newman,  Keble, 
and  their  compeers  was  in  full  force.  The  aesthetic  reaction, 
represented  on  the  Continent  by  Chateaubriand,  Manzoni, 
and  Victor  Hugo,  and  in  England  by  Walter  Scott,  Pugin, 
Ruskin,  and  above  all  by  Wordsworth,  came  in  to  give 
strength  to  this  barrier.  Under  the  magic  of  the  men  who 
led  in  this  reaction,  cathedrals  and  churches,  which  in  the 
previous  century  had  been  regarded  by  men  of  culture  as 
mere  barbaric  masses  of  stone  and  mortar,  to  be  masked 
without  by  classic  colonnades  and  within  by  rococo  work  in 
stucco  and  papier  machc,  became  even  more  beloved  than  in 
the  thirteenth  century.  Even  men  who  were  repelled  by 
theological  disputations  were  fascinated  and  made  devoted 
reactionists  by  the  newly  revealed  beauties  of  mediaeval 
architecture  and  ritual. f 


*  For  an  eloquent  and  at  the  same  time  profound  statement  of  the  evils  flowing 
from  the  "  moral  terrorism  "  and  "  intellectual  tyranny  "  at  Oxford  at  the  period 
referred  to,  see  quotation  in  Pfleiderer,  Development  of  Theology,  p.  371. 

For  the  alloy  of  interested  motives  among  English  church  dignitaries,  see  the 
pungent  criticism  of  Bishop  Hampden  by  Canon  Liddon,  in  his  Life  of  Pusey,  vol. 
i.  P-  363- 

f  A  very  curious  example  of  this  insensibility  among  persons  of  really  high  cul- 
ture is  to  be  found  in  American  literature  toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury.    Mrs.  Adams,  wife  of  John  Adams,  afterward  President  of  the  United  States, 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC  INTERPRETATION.  33- 

The  centre  and  fortress  of  this  vast  system,  and  of  the 
reaction  against  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
was  the  University  of  Oxford.  Orthodoxy  was  its  vaunt, 
and  a  special  exponent  of  its  spirit  and  object  of  its  admi- 
ration was  its  member  of  Parliament,  Mr.  William  Ewart 
Gladstone,  who,  having  begun  his  political  career  by  a  la- 
boured plea  for  the  union  of  church  and  state,  ended  it  by 
giving  that  union  what  is  likely  to  be  a  death-blow.  The 
mob  at  the  circus  of  Constantinople  in  the  days  of  the  By- 
zantine emperors  was  hardly  more  wildly  orthodox  than  the 
mob  of  students  at  this  foremost  seat  of  learning  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race  during  the  middle  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth  century.  The  Moslem  students  of  El  Azhar  are 
hardly  more  intolerant  now  than  these  English  students 
were  then.  A  curious  proof  of  this  had  been  displayed 
just  before  the  end  of  that  period.  The  minister  of  the 
United  States  at  the  court  of  St.  James  was  then  Edward 
Everett.  He  was  undoubtedly  the  most  accomplished 
scholar  and  one  of  the  foremost  statesmen  that  America  had 
produced  ;  his  eloquence  in  early  life  had  made  him  per- 
haps the  most  admired  of  American  preachers  ;  his  classical 
learning  had  at  a  later  period  made  him  Professor  of  Greek 
at  Harvard  ;  he  had  successfully  edited  the  leading  Amer- 
ican review,  and  had  taken  a  high  place  in  American  litera- 
ture ;  he  had  been  ten  years  a  member  of  Congress  ;  he  had 
been  again  and  again  elected  Governor  of  Massachusetts  ; 
and  in  all  these  posts  he  had  shown  amply  those  qualities 
which  afterward  made  him  President  of  Harvard,  Secretary 
of  State  of  the  United  States,  and  a  United  States  Senator. 
His  character  and  attainments  were  of  the  highest,  and,  as 
he  was  then  occupying  the  foremost  place  in  the  diplomatic 
service  of  his  country,  he  was  invited  to  receive  an  appro- 


but  at  that  time  minister  to  England,  one  of  the  most  gifted  women  of  her  time, 
speaking,  in  her  very  interesting  letters  from  England,  of  her  journey  to  the  sea- 
shore, refers  to  Canterbury  Cathedral,  seen  from  her  carriage  windows,  and  which 
she  evidently  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  enter,  as  "looking  like  a  vast  prison.'' 
So,  too,  about  the  same  time,  Thomas  Jefferson,  the  American  plenipotentiary  in 
France,  a  devoted  lover  of  classical  and  Renaissance  architecture,  giving  an  ac- 
count of  his  journey  to  Paris,  never  refers  to  any  of  the  beautiful  cathedrals  or 
churches  upon  his  route. 


336  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

priate  honorary  degree  at  Oxford.  But,  on  his  presentation 
for  it  in  the  Sheldonian  Theatre,  there  came  a  revelation  to 
the  people  he  represented,  and  indeed  to  all  Christendom  : 
a  riot  having  been  carefully  prepared  beforehand  by  sundry 
zealots,  he  was  most  grossly  and  ingeniously  insulted  by  the 
mob  of  undergraduates  and  bachelors  of  art  in  the  galleries 
and  masters  of  arts  on  the  floor  ;  and  the  reason  for  this  was 
that,  though  by  no  means  radical  in  his  religious  opinions, 
he  was  thought  to  have  been  in  his  early  life,  and  to  be  pos- 
sibly at  that  time,  below  what  was  then  the  Oxford  fashion 
in  belief,  or  rather  feeling,  regarding  the  mystery  of  the 
Trinity. 

At  the  centre  of  biblical  teaching  at  Oxford  sat  Pusey, 
Regius  Professor  of  Hebrew,  a  scholar  who  had  himself 
remained  for  a  time  at  a  German  university,  and  who  early 
in  life  had  imbibed  just  enough  of  the  German  spirit  to 
expose  him  to  suspicion  and  even  to  attack.  One  charge 
against  him  at  that  time  shows  curiously  what  was  then  ex- 
pected of  a  man  perfectly  sound  in  the  older  Anglican  the- 
ology. He  had  ventured  to  defend  holy  writ  with  the  argu- 
ment that  there  were  fishes  actually  existing  which  could 
have  swallowed  the  prophet  Jonah.  The  argument  proved 
unfortunate.  He  was  attacked  on  the  scriptural  ground 
that  the  fish  which  swallowed  Jonah  was  created  for  that 
express  purpose.  He,  like  others,  fell  back  under  the 
charm  of  the  old  system  :  his  ideas  gave  force  to  the  re- 
action :  in  the  quiet  of  his  study,  which,  especially  after 
the  death  of  his  son,  became  a  hermitage,  he  relapsed  into 
patristic  and  mediaeval  conceptions  of  Christianity,  enforc. 
ing  them  from  the  pulpit  and  in  his  published  works.  He 
now  virtually  accepted  the  famous  dictum  of  Hugo  of  St. 
Victor — that  one  is  first  to  find  what  is  to  be  believed,  and 
then  to  search  the  Scriptures  for  proofs  of  it.  His  devotion 
to  the  main  features  of  the  older  interpretation  was  seen 
at  its  strongest  in  his  utterances  regarding  the  book  of 
Daniel.  Just  as  Cardinal  Bellarmine  had  insisted  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  depends  upon  the  retention  of  the 
Ptolemaic  astronomy  ;  just  as  Danzius  had  insisted  that  the 
very  continuance  of  religion  depends  on  the  divine  origin 
of  the  Hebrew  punctuation  ;  just  as  Peter  Martyr  had  made 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC  INTERPRETATION.  337 

everything-  sacred  depend  on  the  literal  acceptance  of  Gene- 
sis ;  just  as  Bishop  Warburton  had  insisted  that  Christianity 
absolutely  depends  upon  a  right  interpretation  of  the  prophe- 
cies regarding  Antichrist ;  just  as  John  Wesley  had  insisted 
that  the  truth  of  the  Bible  depends  on  the  reality  of  witch- 
craft ;  just  as,  at  a  later  period,  Bishop  Wilberforce  insisted 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  depends  on  the  "  Mo- 
saic "  statements  regarding  the  origin  of  man  ;  and  just  as 
Canon  Liddon  insisted  that  Christianity  itself  depends  on  a 
literal  belief  in  Noah's  flood,  in  the  transformation  of  Lot's 
wife,  and  in  the  sojourn  of  Jonah  in  the  whale  :  so  did  Pusey 
then  virtually  insist  that  Christianity  must  stand  or  fall  with 
the  early  date  of  the  book  of  Daniel.  Happily,  though  the 
Ptolemaic  astronomy,  and  witchcraft,  and  the  Genesis  crea- 
tion myths,  and  the  Adam,  Noah,  Lot,  and  Jonah  legends, 
and  the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew  punctuation,  and  the 
prophecies  regarding  Antichrist,  and  the  early  date  of  the 
book  of  Daniel  have  now  been  relegated  to  the  limbo  of 
outworn  beliefs,  Christianity  has  but  come  forth  the  stronger. 

Nothing  seemed  less  likely  than  that  such  a  vast  in- 
trenched camp  as  that  of  which  Oxford  was  the  centre  could 
be  carried  by  an  effort  proceeding  from  a  few  isolated  Ger- 
man and  Dutch  scholars.  Yet  it  was  the  unexpected  which 
occurred  ;  and  it  is  instructive  to  note  that,  even  at  the 
period  when  the  champions  of  the  older  thought  were  to  all 
appearance  impregnably  intrenched  in  England,  a  way  had 
been  opened  into  their  citadel,  and  that  the  most  effective 
agents  in  preparing  it  were  really  the  very  men  in  the  uni- 
versities and  cathedral  chapters  who  had  most  distinguished 
themselves  by  uncompromising  and  intolerant  orthodoxy. 

A  rapid  survey  of  the  history  of  general  literary  criticism 
at  that  epoch  will  reveal  this  fact  fully.  During  the  last 
decade  of  the  seventeenth  century  there  had  taken  place  the 
famous  controversy  over  the  Letters  of  PJialaris,  in  which, 
against  Charles  Boyle  and  his  supporters  at  Oxford,  was 
pitted  Richard  Bentley  at  Cambridge,  who  insisted  that  the 
letters  were  spurious.  In  the  series  of  battles  royal  which 
followed,  although  Boyle,  aided  by  Atterbury,  afterward  so 
noted  for  his  mingled  ecclesiastical  and  political  intrigues, 
had  gained  a  temporary  triumph  by  wit  and  humour,  Bent- 
50 


333 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


ley's  final  attack  had  proved  irresistible.  Drawing  from  the 
stores  of  his  wonderfully  wide  and  minute  knowledge,  he 
showed  that  the  letters  could  not  have  been  written  in  the 
time  of  Phalaris — proving  this  by  an  exhibition  of  their 
style,  which  could  not  then  have  been  in  use,  of  their  refer- 
ence to  events  which  had  not  then  taken  place,  and  of  a  mass 
of  considerations  which  no  one  but  a  scholar  almost  miracu- 
lously gifted  could  have  marshalled  so  fully.  The  contro- 
versy had  attracted  attention  not  only  in  England  but 
throughout  Europe.  With  Bentley's  reply  it  had  ended. 
In  spite  of  public  applause  at  Atterbury's  wit,  scholars 
throughout  the  world  acknowledged  Bentley's  victory :  he 
was  recognised  as  the  foremost  classical  scholar  of  his  time ; 
the  mastership  of  Trinity,  which  he  accepted,  and  the  Bris- 
tol bishopric,  which  he  rejected,  were  his  formal  reward. 

Although,  in  his  new  position  as  head  of  the  greatest  col- 
lege in  England,  he  went  to  extreme  lengths  on  the  ortho- 
dox side  in  biblical  theology,  consenting  even  to  support  the 
doctrine  that  the  Hebrew  punctuation  was  divinely  inspired, 
this  was  as  nothing  compared  with  the  influence  of  the  sys- 
tem of  criticism  which  he  introduced  into  English  studies 
of.  classical  literature  in  preparing  the  way  for  the  appli- 
cation of  a  similar  system  to  all  literature,  whether  called 
sacred  or  profane. 

Up  to  that  period  there  had  really  been  no  adequate  crit- 
icism of  ancient  literature.  Whatever  name  had  been  at- 
tached to  any  ancient  writing  was  usually  accepted  as  the 
name  of  the  author :  what  texts  should  be  imputed  to  an  au- 
thor was  settled  generally  on  authority.  But  with  Bentley 
began  a  new  epoch.  His  acute  intellect  and  exquisite  touch 
revealed  clearly  to  English  scholars  the  new  science  of  criti- 
cism, and  familiarized  the  minds  of  thinking  men  with  the 
idea  that  the  texts  of  ancient  literature  must  be  submitted  to 
this  science.  Henceforward  a  new  spirit  reigned  among  the 
best  classical  scholars,  prophetic  of  more  and  more  light  in 
the  greater  field  of  sacred  literature.  Scholars,  of  whom 
Porson  was  chief,  followed  out  this  method,  and  though  at 
times,  as  in  Porson's  own  case,  they  were  warned  off,  with 
much  loss  and  damage,  from  the  application  of  it  to  the 
sacred  text,  they  kept  alive  the  better  tradition. 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC   INTERPRETATION.  330 

A  hundred  years  after  Berkley's  main  efforts  appeared 
in  Germany  another  epoch-making  book— Wolf's  Introduc- 
tion to  Homer.  In  this  was  broached  the  theory  that  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  are  not  the  works  of  a  single  great 
poet,  but  are  made  up  of  ballad  literature  wrought  into 
unity  by  more  or  less  skilful  editing.  In  spite  of  various 
changes  and  phases  of  opinion  on  this  subject  since  Wolf's 
day,  he  dealt  a  killing  blow  at  the  idea  that  classical  works 
are  necessarily  to  be  taken  at  what  may  be  termed  their  face 
value. 

More  and  more  clearly  it  was  seen  that  the  ideas  of  early 
copyists,  and  even  of  early  possessors  of  masterpieces  in  an- 
cient literature,  were  entirely  different  from  those  to  which 
the  modern  world  is  accustomed.  It  was  seen  that  manipu- 
lations and  interpolations  in  the  text  by  copyists  and  pos- 
sessors had  long  been  considered  not  merely  venial  sins,  but 
matters  of  right,  and  that  even  the  issuing  of  whole  books 
under  assumed  names  had  been  practised  freely. 

In  181 1  a  light  akin  to  that  thrown  by  Bentley  and  Wolf 
upon  ancient  literature  was  thrown  by  Niebuhr  upon  an. 
cient  history.  In  his  History  of  Rome  the  application  of  sci- 
entific principles  to  the  examination  of  historical  sources  was 
for  the  first  time  exhibited  largely  and  brilliantly.  Up  to 
that  period  the  time-honoured  utterances  of  ancient  authori- 
ties had  been,  as  a  rule,  accepted  as  final:  no  breaking  away, 
even  from  the  most  absurd  of  them,  was  looked  upon  with 
favour,  and  any  one  presuming  to  go  behind  them  was  re- 
garded as  troublesome  and  even  as  dangerous. 

Through  this  sacred  conventionalism  Niebuhr  broke  fear- 
lessly, and,  though  at  times  overcritical,  he  struck  from  the 
early  history  of  Rome  a  vast  mass  of  accretions,  and  gave  to 
the  world  a  residue  infinitely  more  valuable  than  the  origi- 
nal amalgam  of  myth,  legend,  and  chronicle. 

His  methods  were  especially  brought  to  bear  on  students' 
history  by  one  of  the  truest  men  and  noblest  scholars  that 
the  English  race  has  produced — Arnold  of  Rugby — and,  in 
spite  of  the  inevitable  heavy  conservatism,  were  allowed  to 
do  their  work  in  the  field  of  ancient  history  as  well  as  in  that 
of  ancient  classical  literature. 

The  place  of    myth  in   history  thus    became    more  and 


340 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


more  understood,  and  historical  foundations,  at  least  so  far 
as  secular  history  was  concerned,  were  henceforth  dealt  with 
in  a  scientific  spirit.  The  extension  of  this  new  treatment  to 
all  ancient  literature  and  history  was  now  simply  a  matter 
of  time. 

Such  an  extension  had  already  begun  ;  for  in  1829  had  ap- 
peared Milman's  History  of  the  Jews.  In  this  work  came  a 
further  evolution  of  the  truths  and  methods  suggested  by 
Bentley,  Wolf,  and  Niebuhr,  and  their  application  to  sacred 
history  was  made  strikingly  evident.  Milman,  though  a 
clergyman,  treated  the  history  of  the  chosen  people  in  the 
light  of  modern  knowledge  of  Oriental  and  especially  of 
Semitic  peoples.  He  exhibited  sundry  great  biblical  per- 
sonages of  the  wandering  days  of  Israel  as  sheiks  or  emirs 
or  Bedouin  chieftains  ;  and  the  tribes  of  Israel  as  obedient 
then  to  the  same  general  laws,  customs,  and  ideas  governing 
wandering  tribes  in  the  same  region  now.  He  dealt  with 
conflicting  sources  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  Bentley,  and 
with  the  mythical,  legendary,  and  miraculous  somewhat  in 
the  spirit  of  Niebuhr.  This  treatment  of  the  history  of  the 
Jews,  simply  as  the  development  of  an  Oriental  tribe,  raised 
great  opposition.  Such  champions  of  orthodoxy  as  Bishop 
Mant  and  Dr.  Faussett  straightway  took  the  field,  and  with 
such  effect  that  the  Family  Library,  a  very  valuable  series  in 
which  Milman's  history  appeared,  was  put  under  the  ban, 
and  its  further  publication  stopped.  For  years  Milman, 
though  a  man  of  exquisite  literary  and  lofty  historical  gifts, 
as  well  as  of  most  honourable  character,  was  debarred  from 
preferment  and  outstripped  by  ecclesiastics  vastly  inferior 
to  him  in  everything  save  worldly  wisdom  ;  for  years  he  was 
passed  in  the  race  for  honours  by  divines  who  were  content 
either  to  hold  briefs  for  all  the  contemporary  unreason  which 
happened  to  be  popular,  or  to  keep  their  mouths  shut  alto- 
gether. This  opposition  to  him  extended  to  his  works. 
For  many  years  they  were  sneered  at,  decried,  and  kept 
from  the  public  as  far  as  possible. 

Fortunately,  the  progress  of  events  lifted  him,  before  the 
closing  years  of  his  life,  above  all  this  opposition.  As  Dean 
of  St.  Paul's  he  really  outranked  the  contemporary  archbish- 
ops:  he  lived  to  see  his  main  ideas  accepted,  and  his  History 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC  INTERPRETATION.  3^ 

of  Latin  Christianity  received  as  certainly  one  of  the  most 
valuable,  and  no  less  certainly  the  most  attractive,  of  all 
Church  histories  ever  written. 

The  two  great  English  histories  of  Greece — that  by  Thirl- 
wall,  which  was  finished,  and  that  by  Grote,  which  was  be- 
gun, in  the  middle  years  of  the  nineteenth  century — came  in 
to  strengthen  this  new  development.  By  application  of  the 
critical  method  to  historical  sources,  by  pointing  out  more 
and  more  fully  the  inevitable  part  played  by  myth  and  legend 
in  early  chronicles,  by  displaying  more  and  more  clearly  the 
ease  with  which  interpolations  of  texts,  falsifications  of  state- 
ments, and  attributions  to  pretended  authors  were  made, 
they  paved  the  way  still  further  toward  a  just  and  fruitful 
study  of  sacred  literature.* 

Down  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  tra- 
ditionally orthodox  side  of  English  scholarship,  while  it  had 
not  been  able  to  maintain  any  effective  quarantine  against 
Continental  criticism  of  classical  literature,  had  been  able  to 
keep  up  barriers  fairly  strong  against  Continental  discus- 
sions of  sacred  literature.  But  in  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  these  barriers  were  broken  at  many 
points,  and,   the   stream   of   German  thought  being  united 


*  For  Mr.  Gladstone's  earlier  opinion,  see  his  Church  and  State,  and  Macaulay's 
review  of  it.  For  Pusey,  see  Mozley,  Ward,  Newman's  Apologia,  Dean  Church, 
etc.,  and  especially  his  Life,  by  Liddon.  Very  characteristic  touches  are  given  in 
vol.  i,  showing  the  origin  of  many  of  his  opinions  (see  letter  on  p.  184).  For  the 
scandalous  treatment  of  Mr.  Everett  by  the  clerical  mob  at  Oxford,  see  a  rather 
jaunty  account  of  the  preparations  and  of  the  whole  performance  in  a  letter  written 
at  the  time  from  Oxford  by  the  late  Dean  Church,  in  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Dean 
Church,  London,  1894,  pp.  40,  41.  For  a  brief  but  excellent  summary  of  the  char- 
acter and  services  of  Everett,  see  J.  F.  Rhodes's  History  of  the  United  States  from 
the  Compromise  of  1850,  New  York,  1893,  vol.  i,  pp.  291  et  sea.  For  a  succinct  and 
brilliant  history  of  the  Bentley-Boyle  controversy,  see  Macaulay's  article  on  Bentley 
in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  ;  also  Beard's  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1893,  pp.  344. 
345  ;  also  Dissertation  in  Bentley's  works,  edited  by  Dyce,  London,  1836,  vol.  i, 
especially  the  preface.  For  Wolf,  see  his  Prolegomena  ad  Homerum,  Halle,  1795  ; 
for  its  effects,  see  the  admirable  brief  statement  in  Beard,  as  above,  p.  345-  For 
Niebuhr,  see  his  Roman  History,  translated  by  Hare  and  Thirlwall,  London,  1828  ; 
also  Beard,  as  above.  For  Milman's  view,  see,  as  a  specimen,  his  History  of  the 
Jews,  last  edition,  especially  pp.  15-27-  For  a  noble  tribute  to  his  character,  see 
the  preface  to  Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals.  For  Thirlwall,  see  his  His- 
tory of  Greece,  passim  ;  also  his  letters  ;  also  his  Charge  of  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's, 
1863. 


342  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

with  the  current  of  devotion  to  truth  in  England,  there  ap- 
peared early  in  i860  a  modest  volume  entitled  Essays  and 
Reviews.  This  work  discussed  sundry  of  the  older  theo- 
logical positions  which  had  been  rendered  untenable  by 
modern  research,  and  brought  to  bear  upon  them  the  views 
of  the  newer  school  of  biblical  interpretation.  The  authors 
were,  as  a  rule,  scholars  in  the  prime  of  life,  holding  influ- 
ential positions  in  the  universities  and  public  schools.  They 
were  seven — the  first  being  Dr.  Temple,  a  successor  of  Ar- 
nold at  Rugby  ;  and  the  others,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Rowland 
Williams,  Prof.  Baden  Powell,  the  Rev.  H.  B.  Wilson,  Mr. 
C.  W.  Goodwin,  the  Rev.  Mark  Pattison,  and  the  Rev. 
Prof.  Jowett — the  only  one  of  the  seven  not  in  holy  orders 
being  Goodwin.  All  the  articles  were  important,  though 
the  first,  by  Temple,  on  The  Education  of  the  World,  and  the 
last,  by  Jowett,  on  The  Interpretation  of  Scripture,  being  the 
most  moderate,  served  most  effectually  as  entering  wedges 
into  the  old  tradition. 

At  first  no  great  attention  was  paid  to  the  book,  the  only 
notice  being  the  usual  attempts  in  sundry  clerical  news- 
papers to  pooh-pooh  it.  But  in  October,  i860,  appeared  in 
the  Westminster  Review  an  article  exulting  in  the  work  as 
an  evidence  that  the  new  critical  method  had  at  last  pene- 
trated the  Church  of  England.  The  opportunity  for  defend- 
ing the  Church  was  at  once  seized  by  no  less  a  personage 
than  Bishop  Wilberforce,  of  Oxford,  the  same  who  a  few 
months  before  had  secured  a  fame  more  lasting  than  envi- 
able by  his  attacks  on  Darwin  and  the  evolutionary  theory. 
His  first  onslaught  was  made  in  a  charge  to  his  clergy. 
This  he  followed  up  with  an  article  in  the  Quarterly  Re- 
view, very  explosive  in  its  rhetoric,  much  like  that  which  he 
had  devoted  in  the  same  periodical  to  Darwin.  The  bishop 
declared  that  the  work  tended  "toward  infidelity,  if  not  to 
atheism "  ;  that  the  writers  had  been  "  guilty  of  criminal 
levity  "  ;  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  essay  by  Dr.  Tem- 
ple, their  writings  were  "  full  of  sophistries  and  scepticisms." 
He  was  especially  bitter  against  Prof.  Jowett's  dictum, 
"  Interpret  the  Scripture  like  any  other  book  "  ;  he  insisted 
that  Mr.  Goodwin's  treatment  of  the  Mosaic  account  of  the 
origin  of  man  "  sweeps  away  the  whole  basis  of  inspiration 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC   INTERPRETATION. 


343 


and  leaves  no  place  for  the  Incarnation  "  ;  and  through  the 
article  were  scattered  such  rhetorical  adornments  as  the 
words  "  infidel,"  "  atheistic,"  "false,"  and  "wanton."  It  at 
once  attracted  wide  attention,  but  its  most  immediate  effect 
was  to  make  the  fortune  of  Essays  and  Reviews,  which  was 
straightway  demanded  on  every  hand,  went  through  edi- 
tion after  edition,  and  became  a  power  in  the  land.  At 
this  a  panic  began,  and  with  the  usual  results  of  panic — 
much  folly  and  some  cruelty.  Addresses  from  clergy  and 
laity,  many  of  them  frantic  with  rage  and  fear,  poured  in 
upon  the  bishops,  begging  them  to  save  Christianity  and 
the  Church  :  a  storm  of  abuse  arose  :  the  seven  essayists 
were  stigmatized  as  "  the  seven  extinguishers  of  the  seven 
lamps  of  the  Apocalypse,"  "  the  seven  champions  not  of 
Christendom."  As  a  result  of  all  this  pressure,  Sumner,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  one  of  the  last  of  the  old,  kindly,  be- 
wigged  pluralists  of  the  Georgian  period,  headed  a  declara- 
tion, which  was  signed  by  the  Archbishop  of  York  and  a 
long  list  of  bishops,  expressing  pain  at  the  appearance  of 
the  book,  but  doubts  as  to  the  possibility  of  any  effective 
dealing  with  it.  This  letter  only  made  matters  worse.  The 
orthodox  decried  it  as  timid,  and  the  liberals  denounced  it  as 
irregular.  The  same  influences  were  exerted  in  the  sister 
island,  and  the  Protestant  archbishops  in  Ireland  issued  a 
joint  letter  warning  the  faithful  against  the  "  disingenuous- 
ness  "  of  the  book.  Everything  seemed  to  increase  the  fer- 
ment. A  meeting  of  clergy  and  laity  having  been  held  at 
Oxford  in  the  matter  of  electing  a  Professor  of  Sanscrit,  the 
older  orthodox  party,  having  made  every  effort  to  defeat  the 
eminent  scholar  Max  Miiller,  and  all  in  vain,  found  relief 
after  their  defeat  in  new  denunciations  of  Essays  and  Re- 
views. 

Of  the  two  prelates  who  might  have  been  expected  to 
breast  the  storm,  Tait,  Bishop  of  London,  afterward  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  bent  to  it  for  a  period,  though  he  soon 
recovered  himself  and  did  good  service  ;  the  other,  Thirl- 
wall,  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  bided  his  time,  and,  when  the 
proper  moment  came,  struck  most  effective  blows  for  truth 
and  justice. 

Tait,  large-minded  and  shrewd,  one  of  the  most  states- 


344 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


manlike  of  prelates,  at  first  endeavoured  to  detach  Temple 
and  Jowett  from  their  associates ;  but,  though  Temple  was 
broken  down  with  a  load  of  care,  and  especially  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  upon  his  shoulders  the  school  at  Rugby,  whose 
patrons  had  become  alarmed  at  his  connection  with  the 
book,  he  showed  a  most  refreshing  courage  and  manliness. 
A  passage  from  his  letters  to  the  Bishop  of  London  runs  as 
follows  :  "  With  regard  to  my  own  conduct  I  can  only  say 
that  nothing  on  earth  will  induce  me  to  do  what  you  pro- 
pose. I  do  not  judge  for  others,  but  in  me  it  would  be 
base  and  untrue."  On  another  occasion  Dr.  Temple,  when 
pressed  in  the  interest  of  the  institution  of  learning  under 
his  care  to  detach  himself  from  his  associates  in  writing  the 
book,  declared  to  a  meeting  of  the  masters  of  the  school 
that,  if  any  statements  were  made  to  the  effect  that  he  disap- 
proved of  the  other  writers  in  the  volume,  he  should  prob- 
ably find  it  his  duty  to  contradict  them.  Another  of  these 
letters  to  the  Bishop  of  London  contains  sundry  passages  of 
great  force.  One  is  as  follows  :  "  Many  years  ago  you  urged 
us  from  the  university  pulpit  to  undertake  the  critical  study 
of  the  Bible.  You  said  that  it  was  a  dangerous  study,  but 
indispensable.  You  described  its  difficulties,  and  those  who 
listened  must  have  felt  a  confidence  (as  I  assuredly  did,  for  I 
was  there)  that  if  they  took  your  advice  and  entered  on  the 
task,  you,  at  any  rate,  would  never  join  in  treating  them  un- 
justly if  their  study  had  brought  with  it  the  difficulties  you 
described.  Such  a  study,  so  full  of  difficulties,  imperatively 
demands  freedom  for  its  condition.  To  tell  a  man  to  study, 
and  yet  bid  him,  under  heavy  penalties,  come  to  the  same 
conclusions  with  those  who  have  not  studied,  is  to  mock 
him.  If  the  conclusions  are  prescribed,  the  study  is  pre- 
cluded." And  again,  what,  as  cominsr  from  a  man  who  has 
since  held  two  of  the  most  important  bishoprics  in  the  Eng- 
lish Church,  is  of  great  importance  :  "  What  can  be  a  grosser 
superstition  than  the  theory  of  literal  inspiration  ?  But  be- 
cause that  has  a  regular  footing  it  is  to  be  treated  as  a  good 
man's  mistake,  while  the  courage  to  speak  the  truth  about 
the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  a  wanton  piece  of  wicked- 
ness." 

The  storm  howled  on.     In  the  Convocation  of  Canter- 


CONTINUED  GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC  INTERPRETATION.  345 

bury  it  was  especially  violent.  In  the  Lower  House  Arch- 
deacon Denison  insisted  on  the  greatest  severity,  as  he  said, 
"  for  the  sake  of  the  young  who  are  tainted,  and  corrupted, 
and  thrust  almost  to  hell  by  the  action  of  this  book."  At 
another  time  the  same  eminent  churchman  declared:  "Oi 
all  books  in  any  language  which  I  ever  laid  my  hands  on, 
this  is  incomparably  the  worst  ;  it  contains  all  the  poison 
which  is  to  be  found  in  Tom  Paine's  Age  of  Reason,  while  it 
has  the  additional  disadvantage  of  having  been  written  by 
clergymen." 

Hysterical  as  all  this  was,  the  Upper  House  was  little 
more  self-contained.  Both  Tait  and  Thirlwall,  trying  to 
make  some  headway  against  the  swelling  tide,  were  for  a 
time  beaten  back  by  Wilberforce,  who  insisted  on  the 
duty  of  the  Church  to  clear  itself  publicly  from  com- 
plicity with  men  who,  as  he  said,  "  gave  up  God's 
Word,  Creation,  redemption,  and  the  work  of  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

The  matter  was  brought  to  a  curious  issue  by  two  prose- 
cutions— one  against  the  Rev.  Dr.  Williams  by  the  Bishop  of 
Salisbury,  the  other  against  the  Rev.  Mr.  Wilson  by  one  of 
his  clerical  brethren.  The  first  result  w-as  that  both  these 
authors  were  sentenced  to  suspension  from  thdir  offices  for  a 
year.  At  this  the  two  condemned  clergymen  appealed  to 
the  Queen  in  Council.  Upon  the  judicial  committee  to  try 
the  case  in  last  resort  sat  the  lord  chancellor,  the  two  arch- 
bishops, and  the  Bishop  of  London  ;  and  one  occurrence  now 
brought  into  especial  relief  the  power  of  the  older  theo- 
logical reasoning  and  ecclesiastical  zeal  to  close  the  minds  of 
the  best  of  men  to  the  simplest  principles  of  right  and  justice. 
Among  the  men  of  his  time  most  deservedly  honoured  for 
lofty  character,  thorough  scholarship,  and  keen  perception 
of  right  and  justice  was  Dr.  Pusey.  No  one  doubted  then, 
and  no  one  doubts  now,  that  he  would  have  gone  to  the  stake 
sooner  than  knowingly  countenance  wrong  or  injustice;  and 
yet  we  find  him  at  this  time  writing  a  series  of  long  and  ear. 
nest  letters  to  the  Bishop  of  London,  who,  as  a  judge,  was 
hearing  this  case,  which  involved  the  livelihood  and  even  the 
good  name  of  the  men  on  trial,  pointing  out  to  the  bishop 
the  evil  consequences  which  must  follow  should  the  authors 


346  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

of  Essays  and  Reviews  be  acquitted,  and  virtually  beseeching 
the  judges,  on  grounds  of  expediency,  to  convict  them.  Hap- 
pily,  Bishop  Tait  was  too  just  a  man  to  be  thrown  off  his 
bearings  by  appeals  such  as  this. 

The  decision  of  the  court,  as  finally  rendered  by  the  lord 
chancellor,  virtually  declared  it  to  be  no  part  of  the  duty  of 
the  tribunal  to  pronounce  any  opinion  upon  the  book ;  that 
the  court  only  had  to  do  with  certain  extracts  which  had 
been  presented.  Among  these  was  one  adduced  in  support 
of  a  charge  against  Mr.  Wilson— that  he  denied  the  doctrine 
of  eternal  punishment.  On  this  the  court  decided  that  it  did 
"  not  find  in  the  formularies  of  the  English  Church  any  such 
distinct  declaration  upon  the  subject  as  to  require  it  to  pun- 
ish the  expression  of  a  hope  by  a  clergyman  that  even  the 
ultimate  pardon  of  the  wicked  who  are  condemned  in  the 
day  of  judgment  may  be  consistent  with  the  will  of  Almighty 
God."  While  the  archbishops  dissented  from  this  judgment, 
Bishop  Tait  united  in  it  with  the  lord  chancellor  and  the 
lay  judges. 

And  now  the  panic  broke  out  more  severely  than  ever. 
Confusion  became  worse  confounded.  The  earnest-minded 
insisted  that  the  tribunal  had  virtually  approved  Essays  and 
Reviews;  the  cynical  remarked  that  it  had  "dismissed  hell 
with  costs."  An  alliance  was  made  at  once  between  the  more 
zealous  High  and  Low  Church  men,  and  Oxford  became  its 
headquarters :  Dr.  Pusey  and  Archdeacon  Denison  were 
among  the  leaders,  and  an  impassioned  declaration  was  posted 
to  every  clergyman  in  England  and  Ireland,  with  a  letter  beg- 
ging him,  "  for  the  love  of  God,"  to  sign  it.  Thus  it  was  that 
in  a  very  short  time  eleven  thousand  signatures  were  ob- 
tained. Besides  this,  deputations  claiming  to  represent  one 
hundred  and  thirty-seven  thousand  laymen  waited  on  the 
archbishops  to  thank  them  for  dissenting  from  the  judgment. 
The  Convocation  of  Canterbury  also  plunged  into  the  fray, 
Bishop  Wilberforce  being  the  champion  of  the  older  ortho- 
doxy, and  Bishop  Tait  of  the  new.  Caustic  was  the  speech 
made  by  Bishop  Thirlwall,  in  which  he  declared  that  he  con- 
sidered the  eleven  thousand  names,  headed  by  that  of  Pusey, 
attached  to  the  Oxford  declaration  "  in  the  light  of  a  row  of 
figures  preceded  by  a  decimal  point,  so  that,  however  far  the 


CONTINUED   GROWTH  OF  SCIENTIFIC  INTERPRETATION.  347 

series  may  be  advanced,  it  never  can  rise  to  the  value  of  a 
single  unit." 

In  spite  of  all  that  could  be  done,  the  act  of  condemnation 
was  carried  in  Convocation. 

The  last  main  echo  of  this  whole  struggle  against  the 
newer  mode  of  interpretation  was  heard  when  the  chancellor, 
referring  to  the  matter  in  the  House  of  Lords,  characterized 
the  ecclesiastical  act  as  "  simply  a  series  of  well-lubricated 
terms — a  sentence  so  oily  and  saponaceous  that  no  one  can 
grasp  it  ;  like  an  eel,  it  slips  through  your  fingers,  and  is 
simply  nothing." 

The  word  "  saponaceous  "  necessarily  elicited  a  bitter  re- 
tort from  Bishop  Wilberforce  ;  but  perhaps  the  most  valu- 
able judgment  on  the  whole  matter  was  rendered  by  Bishop 
Tait,  who  declared,  "  These  things  have  so  effectually  fright- 
ened the  clergy  that  I  think  there  is  scarcely  a  bishop  on  the 
bench,  unless  it  be  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  [Thirl wall],  that 
is  not  useless  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  the  widespread 
alienation  of  intelligent  men." 

During  the  whole  controversy,  and  for  some  time  after- 
ward, the  press  was  burdened  with  replies,  ponderous  and 
pithy,  lurid  and  vapid,  vitriolic  and  unctuous,  but  in  the 
main  bearing  the  inevitable  characteristics  of  pleas  for  in- 
herited opinions  stimulated  by  ample  endowments. 

The  authors  of  the  book  seemed  for  a  time  likely  to  be 
swept  out  of  the  Church.  One  of  the  least  daring  but  most 
eminent,  finding  himself  apparently  forsaken,  seemed,  though 
a  man  of  very  tough  fibre,  about  to  die  of  a  broken  heart  ; 
but  sturdy  English  sense  at  last  prevailed.  The  storm  passed, 
and  afterward  came  the  still,  small  voice.  Really  sound 
thinkers  throughout  England,  especially  those  who  held  no 
briefs  for  conventional  orthodoxy,  recognised  the  service 
rendered  by  the  book.  It  was  found  that,  after  all,  there  ex- 
isted even  among  churchmen  a  great  mass  of  public  opinion 
in  favour  of  giving  a  full  hearing  to  the  reverent  expression 
of  honest  thought,  and  inclined  to  distrust  any  cause  which 
subjected  fair  play  to  zeal. 

The  authors  of  the  work  not  only  remained  in  the  Church 
of  England,  but  some  of  them  have  since  represented  the 
broader  views,  though  not  always  with  their  early  courage, 


348  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

in  the  highest  and  most  influential  positions  in  the  Anglican 
Church.* 


*  For  the  origin  of  Essays  and  Reviezus,  see  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  1S61,  p. 
463.  For  the  reception  of  the  book,  see  the  Westminster  Review,  October,  i860. 
For  the  attack  on  it  by  Bishop  Wilberforce,  see  his  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review, 
January,  1861  ;  for  additional  facts,  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  1861,  pp.  461  et  sea. 
For  action  on  the  book  by  Convocation,  see  Dublin  Review,  May,  1861,  citing  Jelf 
et  al.  ;  also  Davidson's  Life  of  Archbishop  Tail,  vol.  i,  chap.  xii.  For  the  Archi- 
episcopal  Letter,  see  Dublin  Review,  as  above  ;  also  Life  of  Bishop  Wilberforce, 
by  his  son,  London,  1882,  vol.  iii,  pp.  4,  5  ;  it  is  there  stated  that  Wilberforce  drew 
up  the  letter.  For  curious  inside  views  of  the  Essays  and  Reviews  controversy, 
including  the  course  of  Bishop  Hampden,  Tait,  et  al.,  see  Life  of  Bishop  Wilber- 
force, by  his  son,  as  above,  pp.  3-1 1  ;  also  pp.  141-149.  For  the  denunciation  of 
the  present  Bishop  of  London  (Temple)  as  a  "leper,"  etc.,  see  ibid.,  pp.  319,  320. 
For  general  treatment  of  Temple,  see  Eraser's  Magazine,  December,  1869.  For 
very  interesting  correspondence,  see  Davidson's  Life  of  Archbishop  Tait,  as  above. 
For  Archdeacon  Denison's  speeches,  see  ibid.,  vol.  i,  p.  302.  For  Dr.  Pusey's  letter 
to  Bishop  Tait,  urging  conviction  of  the  Essayists  and  Reviewers,  ibid.,  p.  314.  For 
the  striking  letters  of  Dr.  Temple,  ibid.,  pp.  290  et  seq.  ;  also  The  Life  and  Letters 
of  Dean  Stanley.  For  replies,  see  Charge  of  the  Bishop  of  Oxford,  1863  ;  also 
Replies  to  Essays  and  Reviews,  Parker,  London,  with  preface  by  Wilberforce  ;  also 
Aids  to  Faith,  edited  by  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  London,  1861  ;  also  those  by 
Jelf,  Burgon,  et  al.  For  the  legal  proceedings,  see  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1864. 
also  Davidson,  as  above.  For  Bishop  Thirlwall's  speech,  see  Chronicle  of  Convo- 
cation, quoted  in  Life  of  Tait,  vol.  i,  p.  320.  For  Tait's  tribute  to  Thirlwall,  see 
Life  of  Tait,  vol.  i,  p.  325.  For  a  remarkably  able  review,  and  in  most  charming 
form,  of  the  ideas  of  Bishop  Wilberforce  and  Lord  Chancellor  Westbury,  see  H.  D. 
Traill,  The  New  Lucian,  first  dialogue.  For  the  cynical  phrase  referred  to,  see 
Nash,  LJfe  of  Lord  Westbury,  vol.  ii,  p.  78,  where  the  noted  epitaph  is  given,  as 
follows  : 

"  Richard  Baron  Westbury, 

Lord  High  Chancellor  of  England. 

He  was  an  eminent  Christian, 

An  energetic  and  merciful  Statesman, 

And  a  still  more  eminent  and  merciful  Judge. 

During  his  three  years'  tenure  of  office 

He  abolished  the  ancient  method  of  conveying  land, 

The  time-honoured  institution  of  the  Insolvents'  Court, 

And 

The  Eternity  of  Punishment. 

Toward  the  close  of  his  earthly  career, 

In  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council, 

He  dismissed  Hell  with  costs, 

And  took  away  from  Orthodox  members  of  the 

Church  of  England 

Their  last  hope  of  everlasting  damnation." 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  340 

IV.    THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE. 

The  storm  aroused  by  Essays  and  Reviews  had  not  yet 
subsided  when  a  far  more  serious  tempest  burst  upon  the 
English  theological  world. 

In  1862  appeared  a  work  entitled  The  Pentateuch  and  the 
Book  of  Joshua  Critically  Examined^  its  author  being  Colenso, 
Anglican  Bishop  of  Natal,  in  South  Africa.  He  had  former- 
ly been  highly  esteemed  as  fellow  and  tutor  at  Cambridge, 
master  at  Harrow,  author  of  various  valuable  text-books  in 
mathematics  ;  and  as  long  as  he  exercised  his  powers  within 
the  limits  of  popular  orthodoxy  he  was  evidently  in  the 
way  to  the  highest  positions  in  the  Church  :  but  he  chose 
another  path.  His  treatment  of  his  subject  was  reverent, 
but  he  had  gradually  come  to  those  conclusions,  then  so 
daring,  now  so  widespread  among  Christian  scholars,  that 
the  Pentateuch,  with  much  valuable  historical  matter,  con- 
tains much  that  is  unhistorical  ;  that  a  large  portion  of  it 
was  the  work  of  a  comparatively  late  period  in  Jewish  his- 
tory ;  that  many  passages  in  Deuteronomy  could  only  have 
been  written  after  the  Jews  settled  in  Canaan  ;  that  the  Mo- 
saic law  was  not  in  force  before  the  captivity  ;  that  the 
books  of  Chronicles  were  clearly  written  as  an  afterthought, 
to  enforce  the  views  of  the  priestly  caste  ;  and  that  in  all  the 
books  there  is  much  that  is  mythical  and  legendary. 

Very  justly  has  a  great  German  scholar  recently  ad- 
duced this  work  of  a  churchman  relegated  to  the  most  petty 
of  bishoprics  in  one  of  the  most  remote  corners  of  the  world, 
as  a  proof  "  that  the  problems  of  biblical  criticism  can  no 
longer  be  suppressed  ;  that  they  are  in  the  air  of  our  time, 
so  that  theology  could  not  escape  them  even  if  it  took  the 
wings  of  the  morning  and  dwelt  in  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  sea." 

The  bishop's  statements,  which  now  seem  so  moderate, 
then  aroused  horror.  Especial  wrath  was  caused  by  some 
of  his  arithmetical  arguments,  and  among  them  those  which 
showed  that  an  army  of  six  hundred  thousand  men  could 
not  have  been  mobilized  in  a  single  night  ;  that  three  mil- 
lions of  people,  with  their  flocks  and  herds,  could  neither 
have  obtained  food  on  so  small  and  arid  a  desert  as  that  over 


350 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


which  they  were  said  to  have  wandered  during  forty  years, 
nor  water  from  a  single  well  ;  and  that  the  butchery  of  two 
hundred  thousand  Midianites  by  twelve  thousand  Israelites, 
"  exceeding  infinitely  in  atrocity  the  tragedy  at  Cawnpore, 
had  happily  only  been  carried  out  on  paper."  There  was 
nothing  of  the  scoffer  in  him.  While  preserving  his  own 
independence,  he  had  kept  in  touch  with  the  most  earnest 
thought  both  among  European  scholars  and  in  the  little 
flock  intrusted  to  his  care.  He  evidently  remembered  what 
had  resulted  from  the  attempt  to  hold  the  working  classes 
in  the  towns  of  France,  Germany,  and  Italy  to  outworn  be- 
liefs ;  he  had  found  even  the  Zulus,  whom  he  thought  to 
convert,  suspicious  of  the  legendary  features  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  with  his  clear  practical  mind  he  realized  the 
danger  which  threatened  the  English  Church  and  Christian- 
ity— the  danger  of  tying  its  religion  and  morality  to  inter- 
pretations and  conceptions  of  Scripture  more  and  more 
widely  seen  and  felt  to  be  contrary  to  facts.  He  saw  the 
especial  peril  of  sham  explanations,  of  covering  up  facts 
which  must  soon  be  known,  and  which,  when  revealed,  must 
inevitably  bring  the  plain  people  of  England  to  regard  their 
teachers,  even  the  most  deserving,  as  "  solemnly  constituted 
impostors  " — ecclesiastics  whose  tenure  depends  on  asser- 
tions which  they  know  to  be  untrue.  Therefore  it  was  that, 
when  his  catechumens  questioned  him  regarding  some  of 
the  Old  Testament  legends,  the  bishop  determined  to  tell 
the  truth.  He  says  :  "  My  heart  answered  in  the  words  of 
the  prophet,  '  Shall  a  man  speak  lies  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  ?  '     I  determined  not  to  do  so." 

But  none  of  these  considerations  availed  in  his  behalf  at 
first.  The  outcry  against  the  work  was  deafening  :  church- 
men and  dissenters  rushed  forward  to  attack  it.  Arch- 
deacon Denison,  chairman  of  the  committee  of  Convocation 
appointed  to  examine  it,  uttered  a  noisy  anathema.  Convo- 
cation solemnly  condemned  it ;  and  a  zealous  colonial  bishop, 
relying  upon  a  nominal  supremacy,  deposed  and  excom- 
municated its  author,  declaring  him  "  given  over  to  Satan." 
On  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  the  press  groaned  with  "  an- 
swers," some  of  these  being  especially  injurious  to  the  cause 
they  were  intended  to  serve,  and  none  more  so  than  sundry 


'THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  35! 

efforts  by  the  bishops  themselves.  One  of  the  points  upon 
which  they  attacked  him  was  his  assertion  that  the  reference 
in  Leviticus  to  the  hare  chewing  its  cud  contains  an  error. 
Upon  this  Prof.  Hitzig,  of  Leipsic,  one  of  the  best  Hebrew 
scholars  of  his  time,  remarked  :  "  Your  bishops  are  making 
themselves  the  laughing-stock  of  Europe.  Every  Hebraist 
knows  that  the  animal  mentioned  in  Leviticus  is  really  the 
hare  ;  .  .  .  every  zoologist  knows  that  it  does  not  chew  the 
cud."  * 

On  Colenso's  return  to  Natal,  where  many  of  the  clergy 
and  laity  who  felt  grateful  for  his  years  of  devotion  to  them 
received  him  with  signs  of  affection,  an  attempt  was  made 
to  ruin  these  clergymen  by  depriving  them  of  their  little 
stipends,  and  to  terrify  the  simple-minded  laity  by  threaten- 
ing them  with  the  same  "greater  excommunication"  which 
had  been  inflicted  upon  their  bishop.  To  make  the  mean- 
ing of  this  more  evident,  the  vicar-general  of  the  Bishop  of 
Cape  Town  met  Colenso  at  the  door  of  his  own  cathedral, 
and  solemnly  bade  him  "  depart  from  the  house  of  God  as 
one  who  has  been  handed  over  to  the  Evil  One."  The 
sentence  of  excommunication  was  read  before  the  assem- 
bled faithful,  and  they  were  enjoined  to  treat  their  bishop 
as  "  a  heathen  man  and  a  publican."  But  these  and  a  long 
series  of  other  persecutions  created  a  reaction  in  his  fa- 
vour. 

There  remained  to  Colenso  one  bulwark  which  his  ene- 
mies found  stronger  than  they  had  imagined — the  British 
courts  of  justice.  The  greatest  efforts  were  now  made  to 
gain  the  day  before  these  courts,  to  humiliate  Colenso,  and 
to  reduce  to  beggary  the  clergy  who  remained  faithful  to 
him  ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  one  of  the  leaders  in  pre- 


*  For  the  citation  referred  to,  see  Pfleiderer,  as  above,  book  iv,  chap.  ii.  For 
the  passages  referred  to  as  provoking  especial  wrath,  see  Colenso,  Lectures  on  the 
Pentateuch  and  the  Moabite  Stone,  1876,  p.  217.  For  the  episode  regarding  the 
hare  chewing  the  cud,  see  Cox,  Life  of  Colenso,  vol.  i,  p.  240.  The  following  epi- 
gram went  the  rounds : 

"  The  bishops  all  have  sworn  to  shed  their  blood 
To  prove  'tis  true  the  hare  cloth  chew  the  cud. 
O  bishops,  doctors,  and  divines,  beware — 
Weak  is  the  faith  that  hangs  upon  a  hair !  " 


352  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

paring-  the  legal  plea  of  the  committee  against  him  was  Mr. 
Gladstone. 

But  this  bulwark  proved  impregnable  :  both  the  Judicial 
Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  and  the  Rolls  Court  de- 
cided in  Colenso's  favour.  Not  only  were  his  enemies  thus 
forbidden  to  deprive  him  of  his  salary,  but  their  excom- 
munication of  him  was  made  null  and  void  ;  it  became,  in- 
deed, a  subject  of  ridicule,  and  even  a  man  so  nurtured  in 
religious  sentiment  as  John  Keble  confessed  and  lamented 
that  the  English  people  no  longer  believed  in  excommuni- 
cation. The  bitterness  of  the  defeated  found  vent  in  the 
utterances  of  the  colonial  metropolitan  who  had  excom- 
municated Colenso — Bishop  Gray,  "  the  Lion  of  Cape 
Town  " — who  denounced  the  judgment  as  "  awful  and  pro- 
fane," and  the  Privy  Council  as  "  a  masterpiece  of  Satan  " 
and  "  the  great  dragon  of  the  English  Church."  Even  Wil- 
berforce,  careful  as  he  was  to  avoid  attacking  anything-  es- 
tablished, alluded  with  deep  regret  to  "  the  devotion  of  the 
English  people  to  the  law  in  matters  of  this  sort." 

Their  failure  in  the  courts  only  seemed  to  increase  the 
violence  of  the  attacking  party.  The  Anglican  communion, 
both  in  England  and  America,  was  stirred  to  its  depths 
against  the  heretic,  and  various  dissenting  bodies  strove  to 
show  equal  zeal.  Great  pains  were  taken  to  root  out  his 
reputation  :  it  was  declared  that  he  had  merely  stolen  the 
ideas  of  rationalists  on  the  Continent  by  wholesale,  and 
peddled  them  out  in  England  at  retail ;  the  fact  being  that, 
while  he  used  all  the  sources  of  information  at  his  command, 
and  was  large-minded  enough  to  put  himself  into  relations 
with  the  best-biblical  scholarship  of  the  Continent,  he  was 
singularly  independent  in  his  judgment,  and  that  his  inves- 
tigations were  of  lasting  value  in  modifying  Continental 
thought.  Kuenen,  the  most  distinguished  of  all  his  contem- 
poraries in  this  field,  modified,  as  he  himself  declared,  one 
of  his  own  leading  theories  after  reading  Colenso's  argu- 
ment ;  and  other  Continental  scholars  scarcely  less  emi- 
nent acknowledged  their  great  indebtedness  to  the  English 
scholar  for  original  suo-or-estions.* 

*  For  interesting  details  of  the  Colenso  persecution,  see   Davidson's  Life  of 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE. 


353 


But  the  zeal  of  the  bishop's  enemies  did  not  end  with 
calumny.  He  was  socially  ostracized — more  completely 
even  than  Lyell  had  been  after  the  publication  of  his  Prin- 
ciples of  Geology  thirty  years  before.  Even  old  friends  left 
him,  among  them  Frederick  Denison  Maurice,  who,  when 
himself  under  the  ban  of  heresy,  had  been  defended  by  Co- 
lenso.  Nor  was  Maurice  the  only  heretic  who  turned  against 
him;  Matthew  Arnold  attacked  him,  and  set  up,  as  a  true 
ideal  of  the  work  needed  to  improve  the  English  Church 
and  people,  of  all  books  in  the  world,  Spinoza's  Tractatus I 
A  large  part  of  the  English  populace  was  led  to  regard 
him  as  an  "infidel,"  a  "traitor,"  an  "apostate,"  and  even  as 
"  an  unclean  being " ;  servants  left  his  house  in  horror ; 
"  Tray,  Blanche,  and  Sweetheart  were  let  loose  upon  him  "  ; 
and  one  of  the  favourite  amusements  of  the  period  among 
men  of  petty  wit  and  no  convictions  was  the  devising  of 
light  ribaldry  against  him.* 


Tait,  chaps,  xiii  and  xiv  ;  also  the  Lives  of  Bishops  Wilberfoice  and  Gray.  For 
full  accounts  of  the  struggle,  see  Cox,  Life  of  Bishop  Colaiso,  London,  188S,  espe- 
cially vol.  i,  chap.  v.  For  the  dramatic  performance  at  Colenso's  cathedral,  see 
vol.  ii,  pp.  14-25.  For  a  very  impartial  and  appreciative  statement  regarding 
Colenso"s  work,  see  Cheyne,  Founders  of  Old  Testament  Criticism,  London,  1893, 
chap.  ix.  For  testimony  to  the  originality  and  value  of  Colenso's  contributions, 
see  Kuenen,  Origin  and  Composition  of  the  Hexateuch,  Introduction,  p.  xx,  as 
follows:  "Colenso  directed  my  attention  to  difficulties  which  I  had  hitherto 
failed  to  observe  or  adequately  to  reckon  with  ;  and  as  to  the  opinion  of  his  labours 
current  in  Germany,  I  need  only  say  that,  inasmuch  as  Ewald,  Bunsen,  Bleek,  and 
Knabel  were  every  one  of  them  logically  forced  to  revise  their  theories  in  the  light 
of  the  English  bishop's  researches,  there  was  small  reason  in  the  cry  that  his 
methods  were  antiquated  and  his  objections  stale."  For  a  brief  but  very  effective 
tribute  to  Colenso  as  an  independent  thinker  whose  merits  are  now  acknowledged 
by  Continental  scholars,  see  Pfleiderer,  Development  of  Theology,  as  above. 

*  One  of  the  nonsense  verses  in  vogue  at  the  time  summed  up  the  controversy 
as  follows : 

"  A  bishop  there  was  of  Natal, 

Who  had  a  Zulu  for  his  pal  ; 
Said  the  Zulu,  '  My  dear, 
Don't  you  think  Genesis  queer?' 

Which  converted  my  lord  of  Natal." 

But  verses  quite  as  good  appeared  on  the  other  side,  one  of  them  being  as 

follows  : 

"  Is  this,  then,  the  great  Colenso, 
Who  all  the  bishops  offends  so  ? 
51 


354 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


In  the  midst  of  all  this  controversy  stood  three  men,  each 
of  whom  has  connected  his  name  with  it  permanently. 

First  of  these  was  Samuel  Wilberforce,  at  that  time 
Bishop  of  Oxford.  The  gifted  son  of  William  Wilberforce, 
who  had  been  honoured  throughout  the  world  for  his  efforts 
in  the  suppression  of  the  slave  trade,  he  had  been  rapidly  ad- 
vanced in  the  English  Church,  and  was  at  this  time  a  prelate 
of  wide  influence.  He  was  eloquent  and  diplomatic,  witty 
and  amiable,  always  sure  to  be  with  his  fellow-churchmen 
and  polite  society  against  uncomfortable  changes.  Whether 
the  struggle  was  against  the  slave  power  in  the  United 
States,  or  the  squirearchy  in  Great  Britain,  or  the  evolution 
theory  of  Darwin,  or  the  new  views  promulgated  by  the 
Essayists  and  Reviewers,  he  was  always  the  suave  spokesman 
of  those  who  opposed  every  innovator  and  "  besought  him 
to  depart  out  of  their  coasts."  Mingling  in  curious  propor- 
tions a  truly  religious  feeling  with  care  for  his  own  advance- 
ment, his  remarkable  power  in  the  pulpit  gave  him  great 
strength  to  carry  out  his  purposes,  and  his  charming  facility 
in  being  all  things  to  all  men,  as  well  as  his  skill  in  evading 
the  consequences  of  his  many  mistakes,  gained  him  the  sobri- 
quet of  "  Soapy  Sam."  If  such  brethren  of  his  in  the  epis- 
copate as  Thirlwall  and  Selwyn  and  Tait  might  claim  to  be 
in  the  apostolic  succession,  Wilberforce  was  no  less  surely 
in  the  succession  from  the  most  gifted  and  eminently  respect- 
able Sadducees  who  held  high  preferment  under  Pontius 
Pilate. 

By  a  curious  coincidence  he  had  only  a  few  years  before 
preached  the  sermon  when  Colenso  was  consecrated  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  and  one  passage  in  it  may  be  cited  as  show- 
ing the  preacher's  gift  of  prophecy  both  hortatory  and 
predictive.  Wilberforce  then  said  to  Colenso :  "  You  need 
boldness  to  risk  all  for  God — to  stand  by  the  truth  and  its 
supporters  against  men's  threatenings  and  the  devil's  wrath  ; 
.  .  .  you  need  a  patient  meekness  to  bear  the  galling  calum- 

Said  Sam  of  the  Soap, 
'  Bring  fagots  and  rope, 
For  oh  !  he's  got  no  friends,  oh  ! '  " 
For  Matthew  Arnold's  attack  on  Colenso,  see  Macmillans  Magazine,  January, 
1863.     For  Maurice,  see  the  references  already  given. 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE. 


355 


nies  and  false  surmises  with  which,  if  you  are  faithful,  that 
same  Satanic  working,  which,  if  it  could,  would  burn  your 
body,  will  assuredly  assail  you  daily  through  the  pens  and 
tongues  of  deceivers  and  deceived,  who,  under  a  semblance 
of  a  zeal  for  Christ,  will  evermore  distort  your  words,  mis- 
represent your  motives,  rejoice  in  your  failings,  exaggerate 
your  errors,  and  seek  by  every  poisoned  breath  of  slander  to 
destroy  your  powers  of  service."  * 

Unfortunately,  when  Colenso  followed  this  advice  his  ad- 
viser became  the  most  untiring  of  his  persecutors.  While 
leaving  to  men  like  the  Metropolitan  of  Cape  Town  and 
Archdeacon  Denison  the  noisy  part  of  the  onslaught,  Wil- 
berforce  was  among  those  who  were  most  zealous  in  devising 
more  effective  measures. 

But  time,  and  even  short  time,  has  redressed  the  balance 
between  the  two  prelates.  Colenso  is  seen  more  and  more 
of  all  men  as  a  righteous  leader  in  a  noble  effort  to  cut  the 
Church  loose  from  fatal  entanglements  with  an  outworn  sys- 
tem of  interpretation  ;  Wilberforce,  as  the  remembrance  of 
his  eloquence  and  of  his  personal  charm  dies  away,  and  as 
the  revelations  of  his  indiscreet  biographers  lay  bare  his 
modes  of  procedure,  is  seen  to  have  left,  on  the  whole,  the 
most  disappointing  record  made  by  any  Anglican  prelate 
during  the  nineteenth  century. 

But  there  was  a  far  brighter  page  in  the  history  of  the 
Church  of  England  ;  for  the  second  of  the  three  who  linked 
their  names  with  that  of  Colenso  in  the  struggle  was  Arthur 
Penrhyn  Stanley,  Dean  of  Westminster.  His  action  during 
this  whole  persecution  was  an  honour  not  only  to  the  Angli- 
can Church  but  to  humanity.  For  his  own  manhood  and 
the  exercise  of  his  own  intellectual  freedom  he  had  cheer- 
fully given  up  the  high  preferment  in  the  Church  which  had 


*  For  the  social  ostracism  of  Colenso,  see  works  already  cited  ;  also  Cox's  Life 
of  Colenso.  For  the  passage  from  Wilberforce's  sermon  at  the  consecration  of 
Colenso,  see  Rev.  Sir  G.  W.  Cox,  The  Church  of  England  and  the  Teaching  of 
Bishop  Colenso.  For  Wilberforce's  relations  to  the  Colenso  case  in  general,  see 
his  Life,  by  his  son,  vol.  iii,  especially  pp.  113-126,  229-231.  For  Keble's  avowal 
that  no  Englishman  believes  in  excommunication,  ibid.,  p.  128.  For  a  guarded 
statement  of  Dean  Stanley's  opinion  regarding  Wilberforce  and  Newman,  see  a 
letter  from  Dean  Church  to  the  Warden  of  Keble,  in  Life  and  Letters  of  Dean 
Church,  p.  293. 


y(S  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

been  easily  within  his  grasp.  To  him  truth  and  justice  were 
more  than  the  decrees  of  a  Convocation  of  Canterbury  or  of 
a  Pan-Anglican  Synod  ;  in  this  as  in  other  matters  he  braved 
the  storm,  never  yielded  to  theological  prejudice,  from  first 
to  last  held  out  a  brotherly  hand  to  the  persecuted  bishop, 
and  at  the  most  critical  moment  opened  to  him  the  pulpit  of 
Westminster  Abbey.* 

The  third  of  the  high  ecclesiastics  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land whose  names  were  linked  in  this  contest  was  Thirlwall. 
He  was  undoubtedly  the  foremost  man  in  the  Church  of 
his  time— the  greatest  ecclesiastical  statesman,  the  profound- 
est  historical  scholar,  the  theologian  of  clearest  vision  in  re- 
gard to  the  relations  between  the  Church  and  his  epoch. 
Alone  among  his  brother  bishops  at  this  period,  he  stood 
"  four  square  to  all  the  winds  that  blew,"  as  during  all  his  life 
he  stood  against  all  storms  of  clerical  or  popular  unreason. 
He  had  his  reward.  He  was  never  advanced  beyond  a  poor 
Welsh  bishopric ;  but,  though  he  saw  men  wretchedly  infe- 
rior constantly  promoted  beyond  him,  he  never  flinched, 
never  lost  heart  or  hope,  but  bore  steadily  on,  refusing  to 
hold  a  brief  for  lucrative  injustice,  and  resisting  to  the  last 
all  reaction  and  fanaticism,  thus  preserving  not  only  his  own 
self-respect  but  the  future  respect  of  the  English  nation  for 
the  Church. 

A  few  other  leading  churchmen  were  discreetly  kind  to 
Colenso,  among  them  Tait,  who  had  now  been  made  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  ;  but,  manly  as  he  was,  he  was  some- 
what more  cautious  in  this  matter  than  those  who  most 
revere  his  memory  could  now  wish. 

In  spite  of  these  friends  the  clerical  onslaught  was  for  a 
time  effective;  Colenso,  so  far  as  England  was  concerned, 

*  For  interesting  testimony  to  Stanley's  character,  from  a  quarter  whence  it 
would  have  been  least  expected,  see  a  reminiscence  of  Lord  Shaftesbury  in  the 
Life  of  Frances  Power  Cobbe,  London  and  New  York,  1894.  The  late  Bishop  of 
Massachusetts,  Phillips  Brooks,  whose  death  was  a  bereavement  to  his  country  and 
to  the  Church  universal,  once  gave  the  present  writer  a  vivid  description  of  a  scene 
witnessed  by  him  in  the  Convocation  of  Canterbury,  when  Stanley  virtually  with- 
stood alone  the  obstinate  traditionalism  of  the  whole  body  in  the  matter  of  the 
Athanasian  Creed.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  this  account  may  be  brought  to  light 
among  the  letters  written  by  Brooks  at  that  time.  See  also  Dean  Church's  Life 
and  Letters,  p.  294,  for  a  very  important  testimony. 


THE    CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  ,r„ 

357 

was  discredited  and  virtually  driven  from  his  functions.  But 
this  enforced  leisure  simply  gave  him  more  time  to  struggle 
for  the  protection  of  his  native  flock  against  colonial  rapacity, 
and  to  continue  his  great  work  on  the  Bible. 

His  work  produced  its  effect.  It  had  much  to  do  with 
arousing  a  new  generation  of  English,  Scotch,  and  American 
scholars.  While  very  many  of  his  minor  statements  have 
since  been  modified  or  rejected,  his  main  conclusion  was 
seen  more  and  more  clearly  to  be  true.  Reverently  and  in 
the  deepest  love  for  Christianity  he  had  made  the  unhistor- 
ical  character  of  the  Pentateuch  clear  as  noonday.  Hence- 
forth the  crushing  weight  of  the  old  interpretation  upon 
science  and  morality  and  religion  steadily  and  rapidly  grew 
less  and  less.  That  a  new  epoch  had  come  was  evident,  and 
out  of  many  proofs  of  this  we  may  note  two  of  the  most 
striking. 

For  many  years  the  Bampton  Lectures  at  Oxford  had 
been  considered  as  adding  steadily  and  strongly  to  the  bul- 
warks of  the  old  orthodoxy.  If  now  and  then  orthodoxy 
had  appeared  in  danger  from  such  additions  to  the  series  as 
those  made  by  Dr.  Hampden,  these  lectures  had  been,  as  a 
rule,  saturated  with  the  older  traditions  of  the  Anglican 
Church.  But  now  there  was  an  evident  change.  The  de- 
partures from  the  old  paths  were  many  and  striking,  until 
at  last,  in  1893,  came  the  lectures  on  Inspiration  by  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Sanday,  Ireland  Professor  of  Exegesis  in  the  University 
of  Oxford.  In  these,  concessions  were  made  to  the  newer 
criticism,  which  at  an  earlier  time  would  have  driven  the 
lecturer  not  only  out  of  the  Church  but  out  of  any  decent  po- 
sition in  society  ;  for  Prof.  Sanday  not  only  gave  up  a  vast 
mass  of  other  ideas  which  the  great  body  of  churchmen 
had  regarded  as  fundamental,  but  accepted  a  number  of  con- 
clusions established  by  the  newer  criticism.  lie  declared 
that  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen  had  mapped  out,  on  the  whole 
rightly,  the  main  stages  of  development  in  the  history  of 
Hebrew  literature;  he  incorporated  with  approval  the  work 
of  other  eminent  heretics  ;  he  acknowledged  that  very  many 
statements  in  the  Pentateuch  show  "  the  naive  ideas  and 
usages  of  a  primitive  age."  But.  most  important  of  all,  he 
gave  up  the  whole  question  in  regard  to  the  book  of  Daniel. 


358  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

Up  to  a  time  then  very  recent,  the  early  authorship  and  pre- 
dictive character  of  the  book  of  Daniel  were  things  which 
no  one  was  allowed  for  a  moment  to  dispute.  Pusey,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  proved  to  the  controlling  parties  in  the  Eng- 
lish Church  that  Christianity  must  stand  or  fall  with  the 
traditional  view  of  this  book;  and  now,  within  a  few  years 
of  Pusey's  death,  there  came,  in  his  own  university,  speaking 
from  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  whence  he  had  so  often  insisted 
upon  the  absolute  necessity  of  maintaining  the  older  view, 
this  professor  of  biblical  criticism,  a  doctor  of  divinity,  show- 
ing conclusively  as  regards  the  book  of  Daniel  that  the  crit- 
ical view  had  won  the  day  ;  that  the  name  of  Daniel  is  only 
assumed  ;  that  the  book  is  in  no  sense  predictive,  but  was 
written,  mainly  at  least,  after  the  events  it  describes ;  that 
"  its  author  lived  at  the  time  of  the  Maccabean  struggle  "  ; 
that  it  is  very  inaccurate  even  in  the  simple  facts  which  it 
cites  ;  and  hence  that  all  the  vast  fabric  erected  upon  its  pre- 
dictive character  is  baseless. 

But  another  evidence  of  the  coming  in  of  a  new  epoch 
was  even  more  striking. 

To  uproot  every  growth  of  the  newer  thought,  to  destroy 
even  every  germ  that  had  been  planted  by  Colenso  and  men 
like  him,  a  special  movement  was  begun,  of  which  the  most 
important  part  was  the  establishment,  at  the  University  of 
Oxford,  of  a  college  which  should  bring  the  old  opinion  with 
crushing  force  against  the  new  thought,  and  should  train  up 
a  body  of  young  men  by  feeding  them  upon  the  utterances 
of  the  fathers,  of  the  mediaeval  doctors,  and  of  the  apologists 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  and  should  keep 
them  in  happy  ignorance  of  the  reforming  spirit  of  the  six- 
teenth and  the  scientific  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  new  college  thus  founded  bore  the  name  of  the  poet 
most  widely  beloved  among  high  churchmen ;  large  endow- 
ments flowred  in  upon  it ;  a  showy  chapel  was  erected  in  ac- 
cordance throughout  with  the  strictest  rules  of  mediaeval 
ecclesiology.  As  if  to  strike  the  keynote  of  the  thought  to 
be  fostered  in  the  new  institution,  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  pseudo-mediaeval  pictures  was  given  the  place  of  honour 
in  its  hall ;  and  the  college,  lofty  and  gaudy,  loomed  high 
above  the  neighbouring  modest  abode  of  Oxford   science. 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  ^rg 

Kuenen  might  be  victorious  in  Holland,  and  Wellhausen  in 
Germany,  and  Robertson  Smith  in  Scotland — even  Profess- 
ors Driver,  Sanday,  and  Cheyne  might  succeed  Dr.  Pusey 
as  expounders  of  the  Old  Testament  at  Oxford— but  Keble 
College,  rejoicing  in  the  favour  of  a  multitude  of  leaders  in 
the  Church,  including  Mr.  Gladstone,  seemed  an  inexpug- 
nable fortress  of  the  older  thought. 

But  in  1889  appeared  the  book  of  essays  entitled  Lux 
Mundi,  among  whose  leading  authors  were  men  closely  con- 
nected with  Keble  College  and  with  the  movement  which 
had  created  it.  This  work  gave  up  entirely  the  tradition 
that  the  narrative  in  Genesis  is  a  historical  record,  and  ad- 
mitted that  all  accounts  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  of  events 
before  the  time  of  Abraham  are  mythical  and  legendarv  ;  it 
conceded  that  the  books  ascribed  to  Moses  and  Joshua  were 
made  up  mainly  of  three  documents  representing  different 
periods,  and  one  of  them  the  late  period  of  the  exile ;  that 
"  there  is  a  considerable  idealizing  element  in  Old  Testament 
history  "  ;  that  "  the  books  of  Chronicles  show  an  idealizing 
of  history  "  and  "  a  reading  back  into  past  records  of  a  ritual 
development  which  is  really  later,"  and  that  prophecy  is 
not  necessarily  predictive — "  prophetic  inspiration  being  con- 
sistent with  erroneous  anticipations."  Again  a  shudder  went 
through  the  upholders  of  tradition  in  the  Church,  and  here 
and  there  threats  were  heard  ;  but  the  Essays  and  Reviews 
fiasco  and  the  Colenso  catastrophe  were  still  in  vivid  remem- 
brance. Good  sense  prevailed  :  Benson,  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, instead  of  prosecuting  the  authors,  himself  asked 
the  famous  question,  "  May  not  the  Holy  Spirit  make  use  of 
myth  and  legend?"  and  the  Government,  not  long  after- 
ward, promoted  one  of  these  authors  to  a  bishopric* 

In  the  sister  university  the  same  tendency  was  seen. 
Robertson  Smith,  who  had  been  driven  out  of  his  high  posi- 
tion in  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  on  account  of  his  work 
in  scriptural  research,  was  welcomed  into  a  professorship  at 
Cambridge,  and  other  men,  no  less  loyal  to  the  new  truths, 

*  Of  Pusey's  extreme  devotion  to  his  view  of  the  book  of  Daniel  there  is  a 
curious  evidence  in  a  letter  to  Stanley  in  the  second  volume  of  the  latter's  Life  and 
Letters.  For  the  views  referred  to  in  Lux  Mundi,  see  pp.  345-357;  also,  on  the 
general  subject,  Bishop  Ellicott's  Christus  Comptvla!,  r. 


360  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

were  given  places  of  controlling  influence  in  shaping  the 
thought  of  the  new  generation. 

Nor  did  the  warfare  against  biblical  science  produce  any- 
different  results  among  the  dissenters  of  England.  In  1862 
Samuel  Davidson,  a  professor  in  the  Congregational  College 
at  Manchester,  published  his  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. Independently  of  the  contemporary  writers  of  Essays 
and  Reviews,  he  had  arrived  in  a  general  way  at  conclusions 
much  like  theirs,  and  he  presented  the  newer  view  with  fear- 
less honesty,  admitting  that  the  same  research  must  be  ap- 
plied to  these  as  to  other  Oriental  sacred  books,  and  that 
such  research  establishes  the  fact  that  all  alike  contain  legend- 
ary and  mythical  elements.  A  storm  was  at  once  aroused  ; 
certain  denominational  papers  took  up  the  matter,  and  Da- 
vidson was  driven  from  his  professorial  chair  ;  but  he  la- 
boured bravely  on,  and  others  followed  to  take  up  his  work, 
until  the  ideas  which  he  had  advocated  were  fully  considered. 

So,  too,  in  Scotland  the  work  of  Robertson  Smith  was 
continued  even  after  he  had  been  driven  into  England  ;  and, 
as  votaries  of  the  older  thought  passed  away,  men  of  ideas 
akin  to  his  were  gradually  elected  into  chairs  of  biblical  criti- 
cism and  interpretation.  Wellhausen's  great  work,  which 
Smith  had  introduced  in  English  form,  proved  a  power  both 
in  England  and  Scotland,  and  the  articles  upon  various  books 
of  Scripture  and  scriptural  subjects  generally,  in  the  ninth 
edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  having  been  prepared 
mainly  by  himself  as  editor  or  put  into  the  hands  of  others 
representing  the  recent  critical  research,  this  very  important 
work  of  reference,  which  had  been  in  previous  editions  so 
timid,  was  now  arrayed  on  the  side  of  the  newer  thought, 
insuring  its  due  consideration  wherever  the  English  language 
is  spoken. 

In  France  the  same  tendency  was  seen,  though  with  strik- 
ing variations  from  the  course  of  events  in  other  countries — 
variations  due  to  the  very  different  conditions  under  which 
biblical  students  in  France  were  obliged  to  work.  Down  to 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  orthodoxy  of  Bos- 
suet,  stiffly  opposing  the  letter  of  Scripture  to  every  step  in 
the  advance  of  science,  had  only  yielded  in  a  very  slight  de- 
gree.    But  then  came  an  event  ushering  in  a  new  epoch.    At 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  361 

that  time  Jules  Simon,  afterward  so  eminent  as  an  author, 
academician,  and  statesman,  was  quietly  discharging  the 
duties  of  a  professorship,  when  there  was  brought  him  the 
visiting  card  of  a  stranger  bearing  the  name  of  "Ernest 
Renan,  Student  at  St.  Sulpice."  Admitted  to  M.  Simon's 
library,  Renan  told  his  story.  As  a  theological  student  he 
had  devoted  himself  most  earnestly,  even  before  he  entered 
the  seminary,  to  the  study  of  Hebrew  and  the  Semitic  lan- 
guages, and  he  was  now  obliged,  during  the  lectures  on  bib- 
lical literature  at  St.  Sulpice,  to  hear  the  reverend  professor 
make  frequent  comments,  based  on  the  Vulgate,  but  abso- 
lutely disproved  by  Renan's  own  knowledge  of  Hebrew.  On 
Renan's  questioning  any  interpretation  of  the  lecturer,  the 
latter  was  wont  to  rejoin :  "  Monsieur,  do  you  presume  to 
deny  the  authority  of  the  Vulgate— the  translation  by  St.  Je- 
rome, sanctioned  by  the  Holy  Ghost  and  the  Church?  You 
will  at  once  go  into  the  chapel  and  say  '  Hail  Mary  '  for  an 
hour  before  the  image  of  the  Blessed  Virgin."  "  But,"  said 
Renan  to  Jules  Simon,  "  this  has  now  become  very  serious  • 
it  happens  nearly  every  day,  and,  mon  Dieu  !  Monsieur,  I  can 
not  spend  all  my  time  in  saying  '  Hail  Mary  '  before  the  statue 
of  the  Virgin."  The  result  was  a  warm  personal  attachment 
between  Simon  and  Renan ;  both  were  Bretons,  educated  in 
the  midst  of  the  most  orthodox  influences,  and  both  had  un- 
willingly broken  away  from  them. 

Renan  was  now  emancipated,  and  pursued  his  studies  with 
such  effect  that  he  was  made  professor  at  the  College  de 
France.  His  Life  of  Jesus,  and  other  books  showing  the  same 
spirit,  brought  a  tempest  upon  him  which  drove  him  from  his 
professorship  and  brought  great  hardships  upon  him  for 
many  years.  But  his  genius  carried  the  day,  and,  to  the 
honour  of  the  French  Republic,  he  was  restored  to  the  posi- 
tion from  which  the  Empire  had  driven  him.  From  his  pen 
finally  appeared  the  Histoirc  du  Peuple  Israel,  in  which  schol- 
arship broad,  though  at  times  inaccurate  in  minor  details, 
was  supplemented  by  an  exquisite  acuteness  and  a  poetic 
insight  which  far  more  than  made  good  any  of  those  lesser 
errors  which  a  German  student  w7ould  have  avoided.  At 
his  death,  in  October,  1892,  this  monumental  work  had  been 
finished.     In  clearness  and  beauty  of  style  it  has  never  been 


362  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

approached  by  any  other  treatise  on  this  or  any  kindred  sub- 
ject :  it  is  a  work  of  genius  ;  and  its  profound  insight  into  all 
that  is  of  importance  in  the  great  subjects  which  he  treated 
will  doubtless  cause  it  to  hold  a  permanent  place  in  the  liter- 
ature not  only  of  the  Latin  nations  but  of  the  world. 

An  interesting  light  is  thrown  over  the  history  of  advanc- 
ing thought  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  by  the  fact 
that  this  most  detested  of  heresiarchs  was  summoned  to 
receive  the  highest  of  academic  honours  at  the  university 
which  for  ages  had  been  regarded  as  a  stronghold  of  Pres- 
byterian orthodoxy  in  Great  Britain. 

In  France  the  anathemas  lavished  upon  him  by  Church 
authorities  during  his  life,  their  denial  to  him  of  Christian 
burial,  and  their  refusal  to  allow  him  a  grave  in  the  place  he 
most  loved,  only  increased  popular  affection  for  him  during 
his  last  years  and  deepened  the  general  mourning  at  his 
death.* 

In  spite  of  all  resistance,  the  desire  for  more  light  upon 
the  sacred  books  penetrated  the  older  Church  from  every 

side. 

In  Germany,  toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
Jahn,  Catholic  professor  at  Vienna,  had  ventured,  in  an  Intro- 
duction to  Old  Testament  Study,  to  class  Job,  Jonah,  and  Tobit 
below  other  canonical  books,  and  had  only  escaped  serious 
difficulties  by  ample  amends  in  a  second  edition. 

Early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  Herbst,  Catholic  pro- 
fessor at  Tubingen,  had  endeavoured  in  a  similar  Introduction 
to  bring  modern  research  to  bear  on  the  older  view ;  but  the 

*  For  a  remarkably  just  summary  of  Renan's  work,  eminently  judicial  and  at  the 
same  time  deeply  appreciative,  from  a  great  German  scholar,  see  the  Rev.  Dr.  Pflei- 
derer,  professor  at  the  University  of  Berlin,  Development  of  Theology  in  Germany, 
pp.  241,  242,  note.  The  facts  as  to  the  early  relations  between  Renan  and  Jules 
Simon  were  told  in  1878  by  the  latter  to  the  present  writer  at  considerable  length 
and  with  many  interesting  details  not  here  given.  The  writer  was  also  present  at 
the  public  funeral  of  the  great  scholar,  and  can  testify  of  his  own  knowledge  to  the 
deep  and  hearty  evidences  of  gratitude  and  respect  then  paid  to  Renan,  not  merely 
by  eminent  orators  and  scholars,  but  by  the  people  at  large.  As  to  the  refusal  of 
the  place  of  burial  which  Renan  especially  chose,  see  his  own  Souvenirs,  in  which 
he  laments  the  inevitable  exclusion  of  his  grave  from  the  site  which  he  most  loved. 
As  to  calumnies,  one  masterpiece  very  widely  spread,  through  the  zeal  of  clerical 
journals,  was  that  Renan  received  enormous  sums  from  the  Rothschilds  for  attack- 
ing Christianity. 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  363 

Church  authorities  took  care  to  have  all  passages  really  giv- 
ing any  new  light  skilfully  and  speedily  edited  out  ol  the 
book. 

Later  still,  Movers,  professor  at  Breslau,  showed  remark- 
able gifts  for  Old  Testament  research,  and  much  was  ex- 
pected of  him  ;  but  his  ecclesiastical  superiors  quietly  pre- 
vented his  publishing  any  extended  work. 

During  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  much  the 
same  pressure  has  continued  in  Catholic  Germany.  Strong 
scholars  have  very  generally  been  drawn  into  the  position  of 
"  apologists  "  or  "  reconcilers,"  and,  when  found  intractable, 
they  have  been  driven  out  of  the  Church. 

The  same  general  policy  had  been  evident  in  France  and 
Italy,  but  toward  the  last  decade  of  the  century  it  was  seen 
by  the  more  clear-sighted  supporters  of  the  older  Church 
in  those  countries  that  the  multifarious  "  refutations  "  and 
explosive  attacks  upon  Renan  and  his  teachings  had  accom- 
plished nothing  ;  that  even  special  services  of  atonement  for 
his  sin,  like  the  famous  "  Tridno  "  at  Florence,  only  drew  a 
few  women,  and  provoked  ridicule  among  the  public  at  large  ; 
that  throwing  him  out  of  his  professorship  and  calumniating 
him  had  but  increased  his  influence ;  and  that  his  brilliant 
intuitions,  added  to  the  careful  researches  of  German  and 
English  scholars,  had  brought  the  thinking  world  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  old  methods  of  hiding  troublesome  truths  and 
crushing  persistent  truth-tellers. 

Therefore  it  was  that  about  1890  a  body  of  earnest  Ro- 
man Catholic  scholars  began  very  cautiously  to  examine  and 
explain  the  biblical  text  in  the  light  of  those  results  of  the 
newer  research  which  could  no  longer  be  gainsaid. 

Among  these  men  were,  in  Italy,  Canon  Bartolo,  Canon 
Berta,  and  Father  Savi,  and  in  France  Monseigncur  d'Hulst, 
the  Abbe  Loisy,  professor  at  the  Roman  Catholic  University 
at  Paris,  and,  most  eminent  of  all,  Professor  Lenormant,  of 
the  French  Institute,  whose  researches  into  biblical  and  oth- 
er ancient  history  and  literature  had  won  him  distinction 
throughout  the  world.  These  men,  while  standing  up  man- 
fully for  the  Church,  were  obliged  to  allow  that  some  of  the 
conclusions  of  modern  biblical  criticism  were  well  founded. 
The  result  came  rapidly.     The  treatise  of  Bartolo  and  the 


364 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


great  work  of  Lenormant  were  placed  on  the  Index;  Canon 
Berta  was  overwhelmed  with  reproaches  and  virtually  si- 
lenced ;  the  Abbe  Loisy  was  first  deprived  of  his  professor- 
ship, and  then  ignominiously  expelled  from  the  university  ; 
Monseigneur  d'Hulst  was  summoned  to  Rome,  and  has  since 
kept  silence.* 

The  matter  was  evidently  thought  serious  in  the  higher 
regions  of  the  Church,  for  in  November,  1893,  appeared  an 
encyclical  letter  by  the  reigning  Pope,  Leo  XIII,  on  The 
Study  of  Sacred  Scripture.  Much  was  expected  from  it,  for, 
since  Benedict  XIV  in  the  last  century,  there  had  sat  on  the 
papal  throne  no  Pope  intellectually  so  competent  to  discuss 
the  whole  subject.  While,  then,  those  devoted  to  the  older 
beliefs  trusted  that  the  papal  thunderbolts  would  crush  the 
whole  brood  of  biblical  critics,  votaries  of  the  newer  thought 
ventured  to  hope  that  the  encyclical  might,  in  the  language 
of  one  of  them,  prove  "  a  stupendous  bridge  spanning  the 
broad  abyss  that  now  divides  alleged  orthodoxy  from  estab- 
lished science."  f 

Both  these  expectations  were  disappointed  ;  and  yet,  on 
the  whole,  it  is  a  question  whether  the  world  at  large  ma)' 
not  congratulate  itself  upon  this  papal  utterance.  The  docu- 
ment, if  not  apostolic,  won  credit  as  "  statesmanlike."  It 
took  pains,  of  course,  to  insist  that  there  can  be  no  error  of 
any  sort  in  the  sacred  books ;  it  even  defended  those  parts 
which  Protestants  count  apocryphal  as  thoroughly  as  the 
remainder  of  Scripture,  and  declared  that  the  book  of  Tobit 
was  not  compiled  of  man,  but  written  by  God.  His  Holiness 
naturally  condemned  the  higher  criticism,  but  he  dwelt  at 

*  For  the  frustration  of  attempts  to  admit  light  into  scriptural  studies  in  Roman 
Catholic  Germany,  see  Bleek,  Old  Testament,  London,  1882,  vol.  i,  pp.  ig,  20.  For 
the  general  statement  regarding  recent  suppression  of  modern  biblical  study  in 
France  and  Italy,  see  an  article  by  a  Roman  Catholic  author  in  the  Contemporary 
Review,  September,  1894,  p.  365.  For  the  papal  condemnations  of  Lenormant  and 
Bartolo,  see  the  Index  Librorum  Prohibitorum  Sanctissimi  Domini  Nostri  Leonis 
XIII,  P.  M.,  etc.,  Rome,  1891  ;  Appendices,  July,  1890,  and  May,  1891.  The 
ghastly  part  of  the  record,  as  stated  in  this  edition  of  the  Index,  is  that  both  these 
great  scholars  were  forced  to  abjure  their  "  errors  "  and  to  acquiesce  in  the  con- 
demnation— Lenormant  doing  this  on  his  deathbed. 

f  For  this  statement,  see  an  article  in  the  Contemporary  Review,  April,  1894, 
P-  576. 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  365 

the  same  time  on  the  necessity  of  the  most  thorough  study 
of  the  sacred  Scriptures,  and  especially  on  the  importance  of 
adjusting  scriptural  statements  to  scientific  facts.    This  utter- 
ance was  admirably  oracular,  being  susceptible  of  cogent 
quotation  by  both  sides  :  nothing  could  be  in  better  form 
from  an  orthodox  point  of  view  ;  but,  with  that  statesman- 
like forecast  which  the  present  Pope  has  shown  more  than 
once  in  steering  the  bark  of  St.  Peter  over  the  troubled  wa\  es 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  he  so  far  abstained  from  condemn- 
ing any  of  the  greater  results  of  modern  critical  study  that 
the  main  English  defender  of  the  encyclical,  the  Jesuit  Father 
Clarke,  did  not  hesitate  publicly  to  admit  a  multitude  of  such 
results — results,  indeed,  which  would  shock  not  only  Italian 
and  Spanish  Catholics,  but  many  English  and  American  Prot- 
estants.    According  to  this   interpreter,   the   Pope   had   no 
thought  of  denying  the  variety  of  documents  in  the  Penta- 
teuch, or  the  plurality  of  sources  of  the  books  of  Samuel,  or 
the  twofold  authorship  of  Isaiah,  or  that  all  after  the  ninth 
verse  of  the  last  chapter  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel  is  spurious; 
and,  as  regards  the  whole  encyclical,  the  distinguished  Jesuit 
dwelt  significantly  on  the  power  of  the  papacy  at  any  time 
to  define  out  of  existence  any  previous  decisions  which  may 
be  found  inconvenient.     More  than  that,  Father  Clarke  him- 
self, while  standing  as  the  champion  of  the  most  thorough 
orthodoxy,  acknowledged  that,  in  the  Old  Testament,  "  num- 
bers must  be  expected  to  be  used  Orientally,"  and  that  "  all 
these  seventies  and  forties,  as,  for  example,  when  Absalom  is 
said  to  have  rebelled  against  David  for  forty  years,  can  not 
possibly  be  meant  numerically  "  ;  and,  what  must  have  given 
a  fearful  shock  to  some  Protestant  believers  in  plenary  inspi- 
ration, he,  while  advocating  it  as  a  dutiful  son  of  the  Church, 
wove  over  it  an   exquisite   web  with   the  declaration  that 
"  there  is  a  human  element  in  the  Bible  pre-calculated  for  by 
the  Divine."  * 

Considering  the  difficulties  in  the  case,  the  world  has  rea- 
son to  be  grateful  to  Pope  Leo  and  Father  Clarke  for  these 
utterances,  which  perhaps,  after  all,  may  prove  a  better  bridge 


*  For  these  admissions  of  Father  Clarke,  see  his  article  The  Papal 
on  the  Bible,  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  July,  1S94. 


366 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


between  the  old  and  the  new  than  could  have  been  framed 
by  engineers  more  learned  but  less  astute.  Evidently  Pope 
Leo  XIII  is  neither  a  Paul  V  nor  an  Urban  VIII,  and  is  too 
wise  to  bring  the  Church  into  a  position  from  which  it  can 
only  be  extricated  by  such  ludicrous  subterfuges  as  those  by 
which  it  was  dragged  out  of  the  Galileo  scandal,  or  by  such 
a  tortuous  policy  as  that  by  which  it  writhed  out  of  the  old 
doctrine  regarding  the  taking  of  interest  for  money. 

In  spite,  then,  of  the  attempted  crushing  out  of  Bartolo 
and  Berta  and  Savi  and  Lenormant  and  Loisy,  during  this 
very  epoch  in  which  the  Pope  issued  this  encyclical,  there 
is  every  reason  to  hope  that  the  path  has  been  paved  over 
which  the  Church  may  gracefully  recede  from  the  old  sys- 
tem of  interpretation  and  quietly  accept  and  appropriate  the 
main  results  of  the  higher  criticism.  Certainly  she  has  never 
had  a  better  opportunity  to  play  at  the  game  of  "  beggar  my 
neighbour  "  and  to  drive  the  older  Protestant  orthodoxy  into 
bankruptcy. 

In  America  the  same  struggle  between  the  old  ideas  and 
the  new  went  on.  In  the  middle  years  of  the  century  the 
first  adequate  effort  in  behalf  of  the  newer  conception  of  the 
sacred  books  was  made  by  Theodore  Parker  at  Boston.  A 
thinker  brave  and  of  the  widest  range, — a  scholar  indefati- 
gable and  of  the  deepest  sympathies  with  humanity, — a  man 
called  by  one  of  the  most  eminent  scholars  in  the  English 
Church  "  a  religious  Titan,"  and  by  a  distinguished  French 
theologian  "  a  prophet,"  he  had  struggled  on  from  the  divin- 
ity school  until  at  that  time  he  was  one  of  the  foremost  bib- 
lical scholars,  and  preacher  to  the  largest  regular  congrega- 
tion on  the  American  continent.  The  great  hall  in  Boston 
could  seat  four  thousand  people,  and  at  his  regular  discourses 
every  part  of  it  was  filled.  In  addition  to  his  pastoral  work 
he  wielded  a  vast  influence  as  a  platform  speaker,  especially 
in  opposition  to  the  extension  of  slavery  into  the  Territories 
of  the  United  States,  and  as  a  lecturer  on  a  wide  range  of 
vital  topics ;  and  among  those  whom  he  most  profoundly  in- 
fluenced, both  politically  and  religiously,  was  Abraham  Lin- 
coln. During  each  year  at  that  period  he  was  heard  discuss- 
ing the  most  important  religious  and  political  questions  in 
all  the  greater  Northern  cities  ;  but  his  most  lasting  work  was 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  367 

in  throwing  light  upon  our  sacred  Scriptures,  and  in  this  he 
was  one  of  the  forerunners  of  the  movement  now  sroinsr  on 
not  only  in  the  United  States  but  throughout  Christendom. 
Even  before  he  was  fairly  out  of  college  his  translation  of 
De  Wette's  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament  made  an  im- 
pression on  many  thoughtful  men  ;  his  sermon  in  1841  on  The 
Transient  and  Permanent  in  Christianity  marked  the  begin- 
ning of  his  great  individual  career;  his  speeches,  his  lec- 
tures, and  especially  his  Discourse  on  Matters  pertaining  to  Re- 
ligion, greatly  extended  his  influence.  His  was  a  deeply 
devotional  nature,  and  his  public  prayers  exercised  by  their 
touching  beauty  a  very  strong  religious  influence  upon  his 
audiences.  He  had  his  reward.  Beautiful  and  noble  as 
were  his  life  and  his  life-work,  he  was  widely  abhorred.  On 
one  occasion  of  public  worship  in  one  of  the  more  orthodox 
churches,  news  having  been  received  that  he  was  danger- 
ously ill,  a  prayer  was  openly  made  by  one  of  the  zealous 
brethren  present  that  this  arch-enemy  might  be  removed  from 
earth.  He  was  even  driven  out  from  the  Unitarian  body. 
But  he  was  none  the  less  steadfast  and  bold,  and  the  great 
mass  of  men  and  women  who  thronged  his  audience  room  at 
Boston  and  his  lecture  rooms  in  other  cities  spread  his  ideas. 
His  fate  was  pathetic.  Full  of  faith  and  hope,  but  broken 
prematurely  by  his  labours,  he  retired  to  Italy,  and  died 
there  at  the  darkest  period  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States — when  slavery  in  the  state  and  the  older  orthodoxy  in 
the  Church  seemed  absolutely  and  forever  triumphant.  The 
death  of  Moses  within  sight  of  the  promised  land  seems  the 
only  parallel  to  the  death  of  Parker  less  than  six  months  be- 
fore the  publication  of  Essays  and  Reviews  and  the  election  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  to  the  presidency  of  the  United  States.* 

But  here  it  must  be  noted  that  Parker's  effort  was  power- 
fully aided  by  the  conscientious  utterances  of  some  of  his 


*  For  the  appellation  "  religious  Titan  "  applied  to  Theodore  Parker,  see  a  letter 
of  Jowett,  Master  of  Balliol,  to  Frances  Power  Cobbe,  in  her  Autobiography,  vol.  i, 
p.  357,  and  for  Reville's  statement,  ibid.,  p.  9.  For  a  pathetic  account  of  Parker's 
last  hours  at  Florence,  ibid.,  vol.  i,  pp.  10,  11.  As  to  the  influence  of  Theodore 
Parker  on  Lincoln,  see  Rhodes's  History  of  the  United  States,  as  above,  vol.  ii,  p. 
312.  For  the  statement  regarding  Parker's  audiences  and  his  power  over  them, 
the  present  writer  trusts  to  his  own  memory. 


.68  FR0M  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

foremost  opponents.  Nothing  during;  the  American  strug- 
gle against  the  slave  system  did  more  to  wean  religious  and 
God-fearing  men  and  women  from  the  old  interpretation 
of  Scripture  than  the  use  of  it  to  justify  slavery.  Typical 
among  examples  of  this  use  were  the  arguments  of  Hopkins, 
Bishop  of  Vermont,  a  man  whose  noble  character  and  beau- 
tiful culture  gave  him  very  wide  influence  in  all  branches  of 
the  American  Protestant  Church.  While  avowing  his  per- 
sonal dislike  to  slavery,  he  demonstrated  that  the  Bible  sane 
tioned  it.  Other  theologians,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  took 
the  same  ground  ;  and  then  came  that  tremendous  rejoinder 
which  echoed  from  heart  to  heart  throughout  the  Northern 
States  :  "  The  Bible  sanctions  slavery  ?  So  much  the  worse 
for  the  Bible."  Then  was  fulfilled  that  old  saying  of  Bishop 
Ulrich  of  Augsburg  :  "  Press  not  the  breasts  of  Holy  Writ 
too  hard,  lest  they  yield  blood  rather  than  milk."  * 

Yet  throughout  Christendom  a  change  in  the  mode  of 
interpreting  Scripture,  though  absolutely  necessary  if  its 
proper  authority  was  to  be  maintained,  still  seemed  almost 
hopeless.  Even  after  the  foremost  scholars  had  taken  ground 
in  favour  of  it,  and  the  most  conservative  of  those  whose 
opinions  were  entitled  to  weight  had  made  concessions  show- 
ing the  old  ground  to  be  untenable,  there  was  fanatical  op- 
position to  any  change.  The  Syllabus  of  Errors  put  forth  by 
Pius  IX  in  1864,  as  well  as  certain  other  documents  issued 
from  the  Vatican,  had  increased  the  difficulties  of  this  needed 
transition  ;  and,  while  the  more  able-minded  Roman  Catholic 
scholars  skilfully  explained  away  the  obstacles  thus  created, 
others  published  works  insisting  upon  the  most  extreme 
views  as  to  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the  sacred  books.  In 
the  Church  of  England  various  influential  men  took  the  same 
view.  Dr.  Baylee,  Principal  of  St.  Aidan's  College,  declared 
that  in  Scripture  "  every  scientific  statement  is  infallibly 
accurate ;  all  its  histories  and  narrations  of  every  kind  are 
without  any  inaccuracy.  Its  words  and  phrases  have  a 
grammatical  and  philological  accuracy,  such  as  is  possessed 


*  There  is  a  curious  reference  to  Bishop  Hopkins's  ideas  on  slavery  in  Arch- 
bishop Tait's  Life  and  Letters.  For  a  succinct  statement  of  the  biblical  proslavery 
argument  referred  to,  see  Rhodes,  as  above,  vol.  i,  pp.  370  et  scq. 


THE   CLOSING   STRUGGLE.  ^Q 

by  no  human  composition."  In  1S61  Dean  Burgon  preached 
in  Christ  Church  Cathedral,  Oxford,  as  follows:  "No,  sirs, 
the  Bible  is  the  very  utterance  of  the  Eternal  :  as  much 
God's  own  word  as  if  high  heaven  were  open  and  we  heard 
God  speaking  to  us  with  human  voice.  Every  book  is  in- 
spired alike,  and  is  inspired  entirely.  Inspiration  is  not  a 
difference  of  degree,  but  of  kind.  The  Bible  is  filled  to 
overflowing  with  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God  ;  the  books  of  it 
and  the  words  of  it  and  the  very  letters  of  it." 

In  1865  Canon  MacNeile  declared  in  Exeter  Hall  that 
"  we  must  either  receive  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the  Old 
Testament  or  deny  the  veracity,  the  insight,  the  integrity  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  a  teacher  of  divine  truth." 

As  late  as  1889  one  of  the  two  most  eloquent  pulpit  ora- 
tors in  the  Church  of  England,  Canon  Liddon,  preaching  at 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  used  in  his  fervour  the  same  dangerous 
argument:  that  the  authority  of  Christ  himself,  and  there- 
fore of  Christianity,  must  rest  on  the  old  view  of  the  Old 
Testament ;  that,  since  the  founder  of  Christianity,  in  divine- 
ly recorded  utterances,  alluded  to  the  transformation  of 
Lot's  wife  into  a  pillar  of  salt,  to  Noah's  ark  and  the  Flood, 
and  to  the  sojourn  of  Jonah  in  the  whale,  the  biblical  account 
of  these  must  be  accepted  as  historical,  or  that  Christianity 
must  be  given  up  altogether. 

In  the  light  of  what  was  rapidly  becoming  known  regard- 
ing the  Chaldean  and  other  sources  of  the  accounts  given  in 
Genesis,  no  argument  could  be  more  fraught  with  peril  to 
the  interest  which  the  gifted  preacher  sought  to  serve. 

In  France  and  Germany  many  similar  utterances  in  op- 
position to  the  newer  biblical  studies  were  heard  ;  and  from 
America,  especially  from  the  college  at  Princeton,  came  re- 
sounding echoes.  As  an  example  of  many  may  be  quoted  the 
statement  by  the  eminent  Dr.  Hodge  that  the  books  of  Scrip- 
ture "are,  one  and  all,  in  thought  and  verbal  expression,  in 
substance,  and  in  form,  wholly  the  work  of  God,  conveying 
with  absolute  accuracy  and  divine  authority  all  that  God 
meant  to  convey  without  human  additions  and  admixtures  "  ; 
and  that  "  infallibility  and  authority  attach  as  much  to  the 
verbal  expression  in  which  the  revelation  is  made  as  to  the 
matter  of  the  revelation  itself." 
52 


3JO  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

But  the  newer  thought  moved  steadily  on.  As  already 
in  Protestant  Europe,  so  now  in  the  Protestant  churches  of 
America,  it  took  strong  hold  on  the  foremost  minds  in  many 
of  the  churches  known  as  orthodox:  Toy,  Briggs,  Francis 
Brown,  Evans,  Preserved  Smith,  Moore,  Haupt,  Harper, 
Peters,  and  BacOn  developed  it,  and,  though  most  of  them 
were  opposed  bitterly  by  synods,  councils,  and  other  au- 
thorities of  their  respective  churches,  they  were  manfully 
supported  by  the  more  intellectual  clergy  and  laity.  The 
greater  universities  of  the  country  ranged  themselves  on  the 
side  of  these  men  ;  persecution  but  intrenched  them  more 
firmly  in  the  hearts  of  all  intelligent  well-wishers  of  Chris- 
tianity. The  triumphs  won  by  their  opponents  in  assem- 
blies, synods,  conventions,  and  conferences  were  really  vic- 
tories for  the  nominally  defeated,  since  they  revealed  to  the 
world  the  fact  that  in  each  of  these  bodies  the  strong  and 
fruitful  thought  of  the  Church,  the  thought  which  alone  can 
have  any  hold  on  the  future,  was  with  the  new  race  of  think- 
ers;  no  theological  triumphs  more  surely  fatal  to  the  victors 
have  been  won  since  the  Vatican  defeated  Copernicus  and 
Galileo. 

And  here  reference  must  be  made  to  a  series  of  events 
which,  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  have 
contributed  most  powerful  aid  to  the  new  school  of  biblical 
research. 


V.   VICTORY   OF   THE   SCIENTIFIC   AND    LITERARY    METHODS. 

While  this  struggle  for  the  new  truth  was  going  on  in 
various  fields,  aid  appeared  from  a  quarter  whence  it  was 
least  expected.  The  great  discoveries  by  Botta  and  Layard 
in  Assyria  were  supplemented  by  the  researches  of  Rawlin- 
son,  George  Smith,  Oppert,  Sayce,  Sarzec,  Pinches,  and 
others,  and  thus  it  was  revealed  more  clearly  than  ever  be- 
fore that  as  far  back  as  the  time  assigned  in  Genesis  to  the 
creation  a  great  civilization  was  flourishing  in  Mesopotamia  ; 
that  long  ages,  probably  two  thousand  years,  before  the 
scriptural  date  assigned  to  the  migration  of  Abraham  from 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  this  Chaldean  civilization  had  bloomed 
forth  in  art,  science,  and  literature ;  that  the  ancient  inscrip- 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY  METHODS.   ->-ji 

tions  recovered  from  the  sites  of  this  and  kindred  civilizations 
presented  the  Hebrew  sacred  myths  and  legends  in  earlier 
forms — forms  long  antedating  those  given  in  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures;  and  that  the  accounts  of  the  Creation,  the  Tree 
of  Life  in  Eden,  the  institution  and  even  the  name  of  the 
Sabbath,  the  Deluge,  the  Tower  of  Babel,  and  much  else  in 
the  Pentateuch,  were  simply  an  evolution  out  of  earlier  Chal- 
dean myths  and  legends.  So  perfect  was  the  proof  of  this 
that  the  most  eminent  scholars  in  the  foremost  seats  of  Chris- 
tian learning  were  obliged  to  acknowledge  it.* 

The  more  general  conclusions  which  were  thus  given  to 
biblical  criticism  were  all  the  more  impressive  from  the  fact 
that  they  had  been  revealed  by  various  groups  of  earnest 
Christian  scholars  working  on  different  lines,  by  different 
methods,  and  in  various  parts  of  the  world.  Very  honour- 
able was  the  full  and  frank  testimony  to  these  results  given 
in  1885  by  the  Rev.  Francis  Brown,  a  professor  in  the  Pres- 
byterian Theological  Seminary  at  New  York.  In  his  ad- 
mirable though  brief  book  on  Assyriology,  starting  with  the 
declaration  that  "  it  is  a  great  pity  to  be  afraid  of  facts,"  he 
showed  how  Assyrian  research  testifies  in  many  ways  to  the 
historical  value  of  the  Bible  record  ;  but  at  the  same  time  he 
freely  allowed  to  Chaldean  history  an  antiquity  fatal  to  the 
sacred  chronology  of  the  Hebrews.  He  also  cast  aside  a 
mass  of  doubtful  apologetics,  and  dealt  frankly  with  the  fact 
that  very  many  of  the  early  narratives  in  Genesis  belong  to  the 

*  As  to  the  revelations  of  the  vast  antiquity  of  Chaldean  civilization,  and  espe- 
cially regarding  the  Nabonidos  inscription,  see  Records  of  the  Past,  vol.  i,  new- 
series,  first  article,  and  especially  pp.  5,  6,  where  a  translation  of  that  inscription  is 
given  ;  also  Hommel,  Geschichte  Babyloniens  unci  Assyriens,  introduction,  in  which, 
on  page  12,  an  engraving  of  the  Sargon  cylinder  is  given  ;  also,  on  general  subject, 
especially  pp.  166  et  seq.,  309  et  seq.  ;  also  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  pp. 
161-163  I  also  Maspero  and  Sayce,  Dawn  of  Civilization,  p.  599  and  note. 

For  the  earlier  Chaldean  forms  of  the  Hebrew  Creation  accounts,  Tree  of  Life 
in  Eden,  Hebrew  Sabbath,  both  the  institution  and  the  name,  and  various  other 
points  of  similar  interest,  see  George  Smith,  Chaldean  Account  of  Genesis,  through- 
out the  work,  especially  p.  30S  and  chaps,  xvi,  xvii  ;  also  Jensen,  Die  Kosmologie 
der  Babylonicr  ;  also  Schrader,  7 he  Cuneiform  Inscriptions  and  the  Old  Testament ; 
also  Lenormant,  Origines  de  I' Histoirc  ;  also  Sayce,  The  Assyrian  Story  of  Crea- 
tion, in  Records  of  the  Past,  new  series,  vol.  i.  For  a  general  statement  as  to  ear- 
lier sources  of  much  in  the  Hebrew  sacred  origins,  see  Huxley,  Essays  on  Contro- 
verted Questions,  English  edition,  p.  525. 


3/ 


2  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


common  stock  of  ancient  tradition,  and,  mentioning  as  an 
example  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  which  record  a  story  of 
the  Accadian  king  Sargon — how  "  he  was  born  in  retirement, 
placed  by  his  mother  in  a  basket  of  rushes,  launched  on  a 
river,  rescued  and  brought  up  by  a  stranger,  after  which  he 
became  king  " — he  did  not  hesitate  to  remind  his  readers 
that  Sargon  lived  a  thousand  years  and  more  before  Moses ; 
that  this  story  was  told  of  him  several  hundred  years  before 
Moses  was  born  ;  and  that  it  was  told  of  various  other  im- 
portant personages  of  antiquity.  The  professor  dealt  just  as 
honestly  with  the  inscriptions  which  show  sundry  statements 
in  the  book  of  Daniel  to  be  unhistorical ;  candidly  making 
admissions  which  but  a  short  time  before  would  have  filled 
orthodoxy  with  horror. 

A  few  years  later  came  another  testimony  even  more 
striking.  Early  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century 
it  was  noised  abroad  that  the  Rev.  Professor  Sayce,  of  Ox- 
ford, the  most  eminent  Assyriologist  and  Egyptologist  of 
Great  Britain,  was  about  to  publish  a  work  in  which  what 
is  known  as  the  "  higher  criticism  "  was  to  be  vigorously  and 
probably  destructively  dealt  with  in  the  light  afforded  by 
recent  research  among  the  monuments  of  Assyria  and  Egypt. 
The  book  was  looked  for  with  eager  expectation  by  the  sup- 
porters of  the  traditional  view  of  Scripture  ;  but,  when  it 
appeared,  the  exultation  of  the  traditionalists  was  speedily 
changed  to  dismay.  For  Prof.  Sayce,  while  showing  some 
severity  toward  sundry  minor  assumptions  and  assertions  of 
biblical  critics,  confirmed  all  their  more  important  conclu- 
sions which  properly  fell  within  his  province.  While  his 
readers  soon  realized  that  these  assumptions  and  assertions 
of  overzealous  critics  no  more  disproved  the  main  results  of 
biblical  criticism  than  the  wild  guesses  of  Kepler  disproved 
the  theory  of  Copernicus,  or  the  discoveries  of  Galileo,  or 
even  the  great  laws  which  bear  Kepler's  own  name,  they 
found  new  mines  sprung  under  some  of  the  most  lofty  for- 
tresses of  the  old  dogmatic  theology.  A  few  of  the  state- 
ments of  this  champion  of  orthodoxy  may  be  noted.  He 
allowed  that  the  week  of  seven  days  and  the  Sabbath  rest 
are  of  Babylonian  origin  ;  indeed,  that  the  very  word  "  Sab- 
bath "  is  Babylonian ;  that  there  are  two  narratives  of  Crea- 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY   METHODS.  373 

tion  on  the  Babylonian  tablets,  wonderfully  like  the  two 
leading  Hebrew  narratives  in  Genesis,  and  that  the  latter 
were  undoubtedly  drawn  from  the  former  ;  that  the  "  garden 
of  Eden  "  and  its  mystical  tree  were  known  to  the  inhab- 
itants of  Chaldea  in  pre-Semitic  days ;  that  the  beliefs  that 
woman  was  created  out  of  man,  and  that  man  by  sin  fell 
from  a  state  of  innocence,  are  drawn  from  very  ancient  Chal- 
dean-Babylonian texts;  that  Assyriology  confirms  the  belief 
that  the  book  Genesis  is  a  compilation  ;  that  portions  of  it 
are  by  no  means  so  old  as  the  time  of  Moses  ;  that  the  ex- 
pression in  our  sacred  book,  "  The  Lord  smelled  a  sweet  sa- 
vour" at  the  sacrifice  made  by  Noah,  is  "identical  with  that 
of  the  Babylonian  poet";  that  "it  is  impossible  to  believe 
that  the  language  of  the  latter  was  not  known  to  the  biblical 
writer";  and  that  the  story  of  Joseph  and  Potiphar's  wife 
was  drawn  in  part  from  the  old  Egyptian  tale  of  The  Two 
BrotJiers.  Finally,  after  a  multitude  of  other  concessions, 
Prof.  Sayce  allowed  that  the  book  of  Jonah,  so  far  from  being 
the  work  of  the  prophet  himself,  can  not  have  been  written 
until  the  Assyrian  Empire  was  a  thing  of  the  past;  that  the 
book  of  Daniel  contains  serious  mistakes ;  that  the  so-called 
historical  chapters  of  that  book  so  conflict  with  the  monu- 
ments that  the  author  can  not  have  been  a  contemporary  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  and  Cyrus ;  that  "  the  story  of  Belshazzar's 
fall  is  not  historical "  ;  that  the  Belshazzar  referred  to  in  it  as 
kingf,  and  as  the  son  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  was  not  the  son  of 
Nebuchadnezzar,  and  was  never  king;  that  "King  Darius 
the  Mede,"  who  plays  so  great  a  part  in  the  story,  never  ex- 
isted ;  that  the  book  associates  persons  and  events  really 
many  years  apart,  and  that  it  must  have  been  written  at  a 
period  far  later  than  the  time  assigned  in  it  for  its  own 
origin. 

As  to  the  book  of  Ezra,  he  tells  us  that  we  are  confronted 
by  a  chronological  inconsistency  which  no  amount  of  inge- 
nuity can  explain  away.  He  also  acknowledges  that  the  book 
of  Esther  "  contains  many  exaggerations  and  improbabili- 
ties, and  is  simply  founded  upon  one  of  those  same  historical 
tales  of  which  the  Persian  chronicles  seem  to  have  been  full." 
Great  was  the  dissatisfaction  of  the  traditionalists  with  their 
expected  champion  ;  well  might  they  repeat   the  words  of 


374 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


Balak  to  Balaam,  "  I  called  thee  to  curse  mine  enemies,  and, 
behold,  thou  hast  altogether  blessed  them."  * 

No  less  fruitful  have  been  modern  researches  in  Egypt. 
While,  on  one  hand,  they  have  revealed  a  very  considerable 
number  of  geographical  and  archaeological  facts  proving  the 
good  faith  of  the  narratives  entering  into  the  books  attrib- 
uted to  Moses,  and  have  thus  made  our  early  sacred  litera- 
ture all  the  more  valuable,  they  have  at  the  same  time  re- 
vealed the  limitations  of  the  sacred  authors  and  compilers. 
They  have  brought  to  light  facts  utterly  disproving  the  sa- 
cred Hebrew  date  of  creation  and  the  main  framework  of  the 
early  biblical  chronology  ;  they  have  shown  the  suggestive 
correspondence  between  the  ten  antediluvian  patriarchs  in 
Genesis  and  the  ten  early  dynasties  of  the  Egyptian  gods, 
and  have  placed  by  the  side  of  these  the  ten  antediluvian 
kings  of  Chaldean  tradition,  the  ten  heroes  of  Armenia,  the 
ten  primeval  kings  of  Persian  sacred  tradition,  the  ten  "  fa- 
thers "  of  Hindu  sacred  tradition,  and   multitudes  of  other 


*  For  Prof.  Brown's  discussion,  see  his  Assyriology,  its  Use  and  Abuse  in  Old 
Testament  Study,  New  York,  1885,  passim.  For  Prof.  Sayce's  views,  see  The 
Higher  Criticism  and  the  Monuments,  third  edition,  London,  1894,  and  especially 
his  own  curious  anticipation,  in  the  first  lines  of  the  preface,  that  he  must  fail  to 
satisfy  either  side.  For  the  declaration  that  the  "  higher  critic  "  with  all  his  of- 
fences is  no  worse  than  the  orthodox  "  apologist,"  see  p.  21.  For  the  important  ad- 
mission that  the  same  criterion  must  be  applied  in  researches  into  our  own  sacred 
books  as  into  others,  and  even  into  the  mediaeval  chronicles,  see  p.  26.  For  justi- 
fication of  critical  scepticism  regarding  the  history  given  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  see 
pp.  27,  28,  also  chap.  xi.  For  very  full  and  explicit  statements,  with  proofs,  that 
the  "  Sabbath,"  both  in  name  and  nature,  was  derived  by  the  Hebrews  from  the 
Chaldeans,  see  pp.  74  et  sea.  For  a  very  full  and  fair  acknowledgment  of  the  "  Baby- 
lonian element  in  Genesis,"  see  chap,  iii,  including  the  statement  regarding  the  ex- 
pression in  our  sacred  book,  "  The  Lord  smelled  a  sweet  savour,"  at  the  sacrifice 
made  by  Noah,  etc.,  on  p.  119.  For  an  excellent  summary  of  the  work,  see  Dr. 
Driver's  article  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  March,  1894.  For  a  pungent 
but  well-deserved  rebuke  of  Prof.  Sayce's  recent  attempts  to  propitiate  pious  sub- 
scribers to  his  archaeological  fund,  see  Prof.  A.  A.  Bevan,  in  the  Contemporary  Re- 
view for  December,  1895.  For  the  inscription  on  the  Assyrian  tablets  relating  in 
detail  the  exposure  of  King  Sargon  in  a  basket  of  rushes,  his  rescue  and  rule,  see 
George  Smith,  Chaldean  Account  of  Genesis,  Sayce's  edition,  London,  1880,  pp. 
319,  320.  For  the  frequent  recurrence  of  the  Sargon  and  Moses  legend  in  ancient 
folklore,  see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  Dawn  of  History,  p.  598  and  note.  For  various 
other  points  of  similar  interest,  see  ibid.,  passim,  especially  chaps,  xvi  and  xvii  ;  also 
Jensen,  Die  Kostnologie  der  Babylonier,  and  Schrader,  The  Cuneiform  Inscriptions 
and  the  Old  Testament ;  also  Lenormant,  Origines  de  THistoire. 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY  METHODS.  375 

tens,  throwing  much  light  on  the  manner  in  which  the  sacred 
chronicles  of  ancient  nations  were  generally  developed. 

These  scholars  have  also  found  that  the  legends  of  the 
plagues  of  Egypt  are  in  the  main  but  natural  exaggerations 
of  what  occurs  every  year;  as,  for  example,  the  changing  of 
the  water  of  the  Nile  into  blood — evidently  suggested  by  the 
phenomena  exhibited  every  summer,  when,  as  various  emi- 
nent scholars,  and,  most  recent  of  all,  Maspero  and  Sayce,  tell 
us,  "  about  the  middle  of  July,  in  eight  or  ten  days  the  river 
turns  from  grayish  blue  to  dark  red,  occasionally  of  so  in- 
tense a  colour  as  to  look  like  newly  shed  blood."  These 
modern  researches  have  also  shown  that  some  of  the  most 
important  features  in  the  legends  can  not  possibly  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  records  of  the  monuments;  for  example,  that 
the  Pharaoh  of  the  Exodus  was  certainly  not  overwhelmed 
in  the  Red  Sea.  As  to  the  supernatural  features  of  the  He- 
brew relations  with  Egypt,  even  the  most  devoted  apologists 
have  become  discreetly  silent. 

Egyptologists  have  also  translated  for  us  the  old  Nile 
story  of  The  Tzco  Brothers,  and  have  shown,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  that  one  of  the  most  striking  parts  of  our  sa- 
cred Joseph  legend  was  drawn  from  it ;  they  have  been 
obliged  to  admit  that  the  story  of  the  exposure  of  Moses  in 
the  basket  of  rushes,  his  rescue,  and  his  subsequent  great- 
ness, had  been  previously  told,  long  before  Moses's  time, 
not  only  of  King  Sargon,  but  of  various  other  great  person- 
ages of  the  ancient  world  ;  they  have  published  plans  of 
Egyptian  temples  and  copies  of  the  sculptures  upon  their 
walls,  revealing  the  earlier  origin  of  some  of  the  most  strik- 
ing features  of  the  worship  and  ceremonial  claimed  to  have 
be'en  revealed  especially  to  the  Hebrews;  they  have  found 
in  the  Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead,  and  in  various  inscriptions 
of  the  Nile  temples  and  tombs,  earlier  sources  of  much  in 
the  ethics  so  long  claimed  to  have  been  revealed  only  to  the 
chosen  people  in  the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  in  the  ten  com- 
mandments, and  elsewhere;  they  have  given  to  the  world 
copies  of  the  Egyptian  texts  showing  that  the  theology  of 
the  Nile  was  one  of  various  fruitful  sources  of  later  ideas, 
statements,  and  practices  regarding  the  brazen  serpent,  the 
golden   calf,  trinities,  miraculous  conceptions,  incarnations, 


376  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

resurrections,  ascensions,  and  the  like,  and  that  Egyptian 
sacro-scientific  ideas  contributed  to  early  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian sacred  literature  statements,  beliefs,  and  even  phrases 
regarding  the  Creation,  astronomy,  geography,  magic,  medi- 
cine, diabolical  influences,  with  a  multitude  of  other  ideas, 
which  we  also  find  coming  into  early  Judaism  in  greater  or 
less  degree  from  Chaldean  and  Persian  sources. 

But  Egyptology,  while  thus  aiding  to  sweep  away  the 
former  conception  of  our  sacred  books,  has  aided  biblical 
criticism  in  making  them  far  more  precious  ;  for  it  has  shown 
them  to  be  a  part  of  that  living  growth  of  sacred  literature 
whose  roots  are  in  all  the  great  civilizations  of  the  past,  and 
through  whose  trunk  and  branches  are  flowing  the  currents 
which  are  to  infuse  a  higher  religious  and  ethical  life  into  the 
civilizations  of  the  future.* 

*  For  general  statements  of  agreements  and  disagreements  between  biblical  ac- 
counts and  the  revelations  of  the  Egyptian  monuments,  see  Sayce,  The  Higher 
Criticism  and  the  Monuments,  especially  chap.  iv.  For  discrepancies  between  the 
Hebrew  sacred  accounts  of  Jewish  relations  with  Egypt  and  the  revelations  of  mod- 
ern Egyptian  research,  see  Sharpe,  History  of  Egypt ;  Flinders  Petrie,  History  of 
Egypt ;  and  especially  Masperoand  Sayce,  The  Dawn  of  Civilization  in  Egypt  and 
Chaldea,  London,  published  by  the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge, 
1894.  For  the  statement  regarding  the  Nile,  that  about  the  middle  of  July  "in 
eight  or  ten  days  it  turns  from  grayish  blue  to  dark  red,  occasionally  of  so  intense  a 
colour  as  to  look  like  newly  shed  blood,"  see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  as  above,  p.  23. 
For  the  relation  of  the  Joseph  legend  to  the  Tale  of  Two  Brothers,  see  Sharpe  and 
others  cited.  For  examples  of  exposure  of  various  great  personages  of  antiquity  in 
their  childhood,  see  G.  Smith,  Chaldean  Account  of  Genesis,  Sayce's  edition,  p.  320. 
For  the  relation  of  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  etc.,  to  Hebrew  ethics,  see  a  striking  pas- 
sage in  Huxley's  essay  on  The  Evolution  of  Theology,  also  others  cited  in  this  chap- 
ter. As  to  trinities  in  Egypt  and  Chaldea,  see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  especially  pp. 
104-106,  175,  and  659-663.  For  miraculous  conception  and  birth  of  sons  of  Ra, 
ibid.,  pp.  388,  389.  For  ascension  of  Ra  into  heaven,  ibid.,  pp.  167,  168  :  for 
resurrections,  see  ibicl.,  p.  695,  also  representations  in  Lepsius,  Prisse  d'Avennes,  et 
al.  ;  and  for  striking  resemblance  between  Egyptian  and  Hebrew  ritual  and  wor- 
ship, and  especially  the  ark,  cherubim,  ephod,  Urim  and  Thummim,  and  wave  offer- 
ings, see  the  same,  passim.  For  a  very  full  exhibition  of  the  whole  subject,  see 
Renan,  Histoire  die  Peuple  Israel,  vol.  i,  chap.  xi.  For  Egyptian  and  Chaldean  ideas 
in  astronomy,  out  of  which  Hebrew  ideas  of  "  the  firmament,"  "  pillars  of  heaven," 
etc.,  were  developed,  see  text  and  engravings  in  Maspero  and  Sayce,  pp.  17  and  543. 
For  creation  of  man  out  of  clay  by  a  divine  being  in  Egypt,  see  Maspero  and  Sayce, 
p.  154 ;  for  a  similar  idea  in  Chaldea,  see  ibid.,  p.  545  ;  and  for  the  creation  of  the 
universe  by  a  word,  ibid.,  pp.  146,  147.  For  Egyptian  and  Chaldean  ideas  on  magic 
and  medicine,  dread  of  evil  spirits,  etc.,  anticipating  those  of  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, see  Maspero  and  Sayce,  as  above,  pp.  212-214,  217,  636  ;  and  for  extension 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY  METHODS.  3-7 

But  while  archaeologists  thus  influenced  enlightened  opin- 
ion, another  body  of  scholars  rendered  services  of  a  different 
sort — the  centre  of  their  enterprise  being  the  University  of 
Oxford.  By  their  efforts  was  presented  to  the  English-speak- 
ing world  a  series  of  translations  of  the  sacred  books  of  the 
East,  which  showed  the  relations  of  the  more  Eastern  sacred 
literature  to  our  own,  and  proved  that  in  the  religions  of  the 
world  the  ideas  which  have  come  as  the  greatest  blessings 
to  mankind  are  not  of  sudden  revelation  or  creation,  but  of 
slow  evolution  out  of  a  remote  past. 

The  facts  thus  shown  did  not  at  first  elicit  much  gratitude 
from  supporters  of  traditional  theology,  and  perhaps  few 
things  brought  more  obloquy  on  Renan,  for  a  time,  than  his 
statement  that  "  the  influence  of  Persia  is  the  most  powerful 
to  which  Israel  was  submitted."  Whether  this  was  an  over- 
statement or  not,  it  was  soon  seen  to  contain  much  truth. 
Not  only  was  it  made  clear  by  study  of  the  Zend  Avesta  that 
the  Old  and  New  Testament  ideas  regarding  Satanic  and 
demoniacal  modes  of  action  were  largely  due  to  Persian 
sources,  but  it  was  also  shown  that  the  idea  of  immortality 
was  mainly  developed  in  the  Hebrew  mind  during  the  close 
relations  of  the  Jews  with  the  Persians.  Nor  was  this  all. 
In  the  Zend  Avesta  were  found  in  earlier  form  sundry  myths 
and  legends  which,  judging  from  their  frequent  appearance 
in  early  religions,  grow  naturally  about  the  history  of  the 
adored  teachers  of  our  race.  Typical  among  these  was  the 
Temptation  of  Zoroaster. 

It  is  a  fact  very  significant  and  full  of  promise  that  the 
first  large,  frank,  and  explicit  revelation  regarding  this  whole 


of  these  to  neighbouring  nations,  pp.  782,  783.  For  visions  and  use  of  dreams  as 
oracles,  ibid.,  p.  641  and  elsewhere.  See  also,  on  these  and  other  resemblances, 
Lenormant,  Origines  de  THistoire,  vol.i, passim  ;  see  also  George  Smith  and  Sayce, 
as  above,  chaps,  xvi  and  xvii,  for  resemblances  especially  striking,  combining  to 
show  how  simple  was  the  evolution  of  many  Hebrew  sacred  legends  and  ideas  out 
of  those  of  earlier  civilizations.  For  an  especially  interesting  presentation  of  the 
reasons  why  Egyptian  ideas  of  immortality  were  not  seized  upon  by  the  Jews,  see 
the  Rev.  Barham  Zincke's  work  upon  Egypt.  For  the  sacrificial  vessels,  temple 
rites,  etc.,  see  the  bas-reliefs  figured  by  Lepsius,  Prisse  d'Avennes,  Mariette,  Mas- 
pero,  et  al.  For  a  striking  summary  by  a  brilliant  scholar  and  divine  of  the  Angli- 
can Church,  see  Mahaffy,  Prolegomena  to  Anc.  Hist.,  cited  in  Sunderland  The 
Bible,  New  York,  1893,  p.  21,  note. 


3^8  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

subject  in  form  available  for  the  general  thinking  public  was 
given  to  the  English-speaking  world  by  an  eminent  Chris- 
tian divine  and  scholar,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Mills.  Having  already 
shown  himself  by  his  translations  a  most  competent  author- 
ity on  the  subject,  he  in  1894  called  attention,  in  a  review 
widely  read,  to  "  the  now  undoubted  and  long  since  sus- 
pected fact  that  it  pleased  the  Divine  Power  to  reveal  some 
of  the  important  articles  of  our  Catholic  creed  first  to  the 
Zoroastrians,  and  through  their  literature  to  the  Jews  and 
ourselves."  Among  these  beliefs  Dr.  Mills  traced  out  very 
conclusively  many  Jewish  doctrines  regarding  the  attributes 
of  God,  and  all,  virtually,  regarding  the  attributes  of  Satan. 
There,  too,  he  found  accounts  of  the  Miraculous  Conception, 
Virgin  Birth,  and  Temptation  of  Zoroaster.  As  to  the  last, 
Dr.  Mills  presented  a  series  of  striking  coincidences  with  our 
own  later  account.  As  to  its  main  features,  he  showed  that 
there  had  been  developed  among  the  Persians,  many  centu- 
ries before  the  Christian  era,  the  legend  of  a  vain  effort  of 
the  arch-demon,  one  seat  of  whose  power  was  the  summit  of 
Mount  Arezura,  to  tempt  Zoroaster  to  worship  him, — of  an 
argument  between  tempter  and  tempted, — and  of  Zoroaster's 
refusal ;  and  the  doctor  continued  :  "  No  Persian  subject  in 
the  streets  of  Jerusalem,  soon  after  or  long  after  the  Return, 
could  have  failed  to  know  this  striking  myth."  Dr.  Mills 
then  went  on  to  show  that,  among  the  Jews,  "  the  doctrine 
of  immortality  was  scarcely  mooted  before  the  later  Isaiah 
— that  is,  before  the  captivity — while  the  Zoroastrian  scrip- 
tures are  one  mass  of  spiritualism,  referring  all  results  to  the 
heavenly  or  to  the  infernal  worlds."  He  concludes  by  say- 
ing that,  as  regards  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  "  the  hum- 
ble, and  to  a  certain  extent  prior,  religion  of  the  Mazda  wor- 
shippers was  useful  in  giving  point  and  beauty  to  many  loose 
conceptions  among  the  Jewish  religious  teachers,  and  in  in- 
troducing many  ideas  which  were  entirely  new,  while  as  to 
the  doctrines  of  immortality  and  resurrection — the  most  im- 
portant of  all — it  positively  determined  belief."  * 


*  For  the  passages  in  the  Vendidad  of  special  importance  as  regards  the  Temp- 
tation myth,  see  Fargard,  xix,  18,  20,  26,  also  140,  147.  Very  striking  is  the  ac- 
count of  the  Temptation  in  the  Pelhavi  version  of  the  Vendidad.     The  devil  is  rep- 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY  METII<>i>-. 


379 


Even  more  extensive  were  the  revelations  made  by  scien- 
tific criticism  applied  to  the  sacred  literature  of  southern  and 
eastern  Asia.  The  resemblances  of  sundry  fundamental  nar- 
ratives and  ideas  in  our  own  sacred  books  with  those  of  Bud- 
dhism were  especially  suggestive. 

Here,  too,  had  been  a  long  preparatory  history.  The 
discoveries  in  Sanscrit  philology  made  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century  and  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth,  by 
Sir  William  Jones,  Carey,  Wilkins,  Foster,  Colebrooke,  and 
others,  had  met  at  first  with  some  opposition  from  theo- 
logians. The  declaration  by  Dugald  Stewart  that  the  dis- 
covery of  Sanscrit  was  fraudulent,  and  its  vocabulary  and 
grammar  patched  together  out  of  Greek  and  Latin,  showed 
the  feeling  of  the  older  race  of  biblical  students.  But  re- 
searches went  on.  Bopp,  Burnouf,  Lassen,  Weber,  Whitney, 
Max  Miiller,  and  others  continued  the  work  during  the  nine- 
teenth century.  More  and  more  evident  became  the  sources 
from  which  many  ideas  and  narratives  in  our  own  sacred 
books  had  been  developed.  Studies  in  the  sacred  books  of 
Brahmanism,  and  in  the  institutions  of  Buddhism,  the  most 
widespread  of  all  religions,  its  devotees  outnumbering  those 
of  all  branches  of  the  Christian  Church  together,  proved 
especially  fruitful  in  facts  relating  to  general  sacred  litera- 
ture and  early  European  religious  ideas. 

Noteworthy  in  the  progress  of  this  knowledge  was  the 
work  of   Fathers   Hue  and   Gabet.     In  1839  the  former  of 


resented  as  saving  to  Zaratusht  (Zoroaster)  :  "  I  had  the  worship  of  thy  ancestors  ;  do 
thou  also  worship  me."  I  am  indebted  to  Prof.  E.  P.  Evans,  formerly  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Michigan,  but  now  of  Munich,  for  a  translation  of  the  original  text  from 
Spiegel's  edition.  For  a  good  account,  see  also  Haug,  Essays  on  the  Sacred  Lan- 
guage etc.,  of  the  Parsees,  edited  bv  West,  London,  18S4,  pp.  =52  et  sea.  ;  see  also 
Mills's  and  Darmesteter's  work  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  For  1  >r.  M ills's  article 
referred  to,  see  his  Zoroaster  and  the  Bible,  in  The  Nineteenth  Century,  January, 
1894.  For'  the  citation  from  Renan,  see  his  Ilistoire  du  Peuple  Israel,  tome  xiv, 
chap,  iv  ;  see  also,  for  Persian  ideas  of  heaven,  hell,  and  resurrection,  Haug,  as 
above,  pp.  310  et  sea.  For  an  interesting  r/sume"  of  Zoroastrianism,  see  Laing,  A 
Modern  Zoroastrian,  chap,  xiii,  London,  eighth  edition,  1S93.  For  the  Buddhist 
version  of  the  judgment  of  Solomon,  etc.,  see  Fausboll,  Buddhist  Birth 
translated  by  Rhys  Davids,  London,  18S0,  vol.  i,  p.  14.  and  following.  For  very 
full  statements  regarding  the  influence  of  Persian  ideas  upon  the  Jews  duri 
captivity,  see  Kohut,  Ueber  die  jildische  Angelohgie  und  Daemonologie  in  ihren 
Abh&ngigkeit  vom  Parsismus,  Leipzig,  1S66. 


380  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

these,  a  French  Lazarist  priest,  set  out  on  a  mission  to  China. 
Having  prepared  himself  at  Macao  by  eighteen  months  of 
hard  study,  and  having  arrayed  himself  like  a  native,  even 
to  the  wearing  of  the  queue  and  the  staining  of  his  skin,  he 
visited  Peking  and  penetrated  Mongolia.  Five  years  later, 
taking  Gabet  with  him,  both  disguised  as  Lamas,  he  began 
his  long  and  toilsome  journey  to  the  chief  seats  of  Buddhism 
in  Thibet,  and,  after  two  years  of  fearful  dangers  and  suffer- 
ings, accomplished  it.  Driven  out  finally  by  the  Chinese, 
Hue  returned  to  Europe  in  1852,  having  made  one  of  the 
most  heroic,  self-denying,  and,  as  it  turned  out,  one  of  the 
most  valuable  efforts  in  all  the  noble  annals  of  Christian  mis- 
sions. His  accounts  of  these  journeys,  written  in  a  style 
simple,  clear,  and  interesting,  at  once  attracted  attention 
throughout  the  world.  But  far  more  important  than  any 
services  he  had  rendered  to  the  Church  he  served  was  the 
influence  of  his  book  upon  the  general  opinions  of  thinking 
men;  for  he  completed  a  series  of  revelations  made  by  ear- 
lier, less  gifted,  and  less  devoted  travellers,  and  brought  to 
the  notice  of  the  world  the  amazing  similarity  of  the  ideas, 
institutions,  observances,  ceremonies,  and  ritual,  and  even 
the  ecclesiastical  costumes  of  the  Buddhists  to  those  of  his 
own  Church. 

Buddhism  was  thus  shown  with  its  hierarchv,  in  which 
the  Grand  Lama,  an  infallible  representative  of  the  Most 
High,  is  surrounded  by  its  minor  Lamas,  much  like  cardi- 
nals ;  with  its  bishops  wearing  mitres,  its  celibate  priests  with 
shaven  crown,  cope,  dalmatic,  and  censer  ;  its  cathedrals  with 
clergy  gathered  in  the  choir  ;  its  vast  monasteries  filled  with 
monks  and  nuns  vowed  to  poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience ; 
its  church  arrangements,  with  shrines  of  saints  and  angels; 
its  use  of  images,  pictures,  and  illuminated  missals ;  its  serv- 
ice, with  a  striking  general  resemblance  to  the  Mass  ;  antiph- 
onal  choirs;  intoning  of  prayers;  recital  of  creeds;  repeti- 
tion of  litanies  ;  processions;  mystic  rites  and  incense;  the 
offering  and  adoration  of  bread  upon  an  altar  lighted  by  can. 
dies;  the  drinking  from  a  chalice  by  the  priest;  prayers  and 
offerings  for  the  dead  ;  benediction  with  outstretched  hands ; 
fasts,  confessions,  and  doctrine  of  purgatory — all  this  and 
more  was  now  clearly  revealed.     The  good  father  was  evi- 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY  METHODS.  381 

dently  staggered  by  these  amazing  facts  ;  but  his  robust  faith 
soon  gave  him  an  explanation  :  he  suggested  that  Satan,  in 
anticipation  of  Christianity,  had  revealed  to  Buddhism  this 
divinely  constituted  order  of  things.  This  naive  explana- 
tion did  not  commend  itself  to  his  superiors  in  the  Roman 
Church.  In  the  days  of  St.  Augustine  or  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas  it  would  doubtless  have  been  received  much  more 
kindly  ;  but  in  the  days  of  Cardinal  Antonelli  this  was  hardly 
to  be  expected  :  the  Roman  authorities,  seeing  the  danger 
of  such  plain  revelations  in  the  nineteenth  century,  even 
when  coupled  with  such  devout  explanations,  put  the  book 
under  the  ban,  though  not  before  it  had  been  spread  through- 
out the  world  in  various  translations.  Father  Hue  was  sent 
on  no  more  missions. 

Yet  there  came  even  more  significant  discoveries,  espe- 
cially bearing  upon  the  claims  of  that  great  branch  of  the 
Church  which  supposes  itself  to  possess  a  divine  safeguard 
against  error  in  belief.  For  now  was  brought  to  light  by 
literary  research  the  irrefragable  evidence  that  the  great 
Buddha — Sakya  Muni  himself — had  been  canonized  and  en- 
rolled among  the  Christian  saints  whose  intercession  may  be 
invoked,  and  in  whose  honour  images,  altars,  and  chapels 
may  be  erected  ;  and  this,  not  only  by  the  usage  of  the 
mediaeval  Church,  Greek  and  Roman,  but  by  the  special  and 
infallible  sanction  of  a  long  series  of  popes,  from  the  end  of 
the  sixteenth  century  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth — a  sanc- 
tion granted  under  one  of  the  most  curious  errors  in  human 
history.  The  story  enables  us  to  understand  the  way  in 
which  many  of  the  beliefs  of  Christendom  have  been  devel- 
oped, especially  how  they  have  been  influenced  from  the 
seats  of  older  religions  ;  and  it  throws  much  light  into  the 
character  and  exercise  of  papal  infallibility. 

Early  in  the  seventh  century  there  was  composed,  as  is 
now  believed,  at  the  Convent  of  St.  Saba  near  Jerusalem,  a 
pious  romance  entitled  Barlaam  and  JosapJiat — the  latter  per- 
sonage, the  hero  of  the  story,  being  represented  as  a  Hindu 
prince  converted  to  Christianity  by  the  former. 

This  story,  having  been  attributed  to  St.  John  of  Damas- 
cus in  the  following  century,  became  amazingly  popular, 
and  was  soon  accepted  as  true  :  it  was  translated  from  the 


332 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


Greek  original  not  only  into  Latin,  Hebrew,  Arabic,  and 
Ethiopic,  but  into  every  important  European  language,  in- 
cluding even  Polish,  Bohemian,  and  Icelandic.  Thence  it 
came  into  the  pious  historical  encyclopaedia  of  Vincent  of 
Beauvais,  and,  most  important  of  all,  into  the  Lives  of  the 
Saints. 

Hence  the  name  of  its  pious  hero  found  its  way  into  the 
list  of  saints  whose  intercession  is  to  be  prayed  for,  and  it 
passed  without  challenge  until  about  1590,  when,  the  general 
subject  of  canonization  having  been  brought  up  at  Rome, 
Pope  Sixtus  V,  by  virtue  of  his  infallibility  and  immunity 
against  error  in  everything  relating  to  faith  and  morals,  sanc- 
tioned a  revised  list  of  saints,  authorizing  and  directing  it  to 
be  accepted  by  the  Church  ;  and  among  those  on  whom  he 
thus  forever  infallibly  set  the  seal  of  Heaven  was  included 
"  The  Holy  Saint  JosapJiat  of  India,  whose  wonderful  acts  St. 
John  of  Damascus  has  related."  The  27th  of  November  was 
appointed  as  the  day  set  apart  in  honour  of  this  saint,  and  the 
decree,  having  been  enforced  by  successive  popes  for  over 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years,  was  again  officially  approved 
by  Pius  IX  in  1873.  This  decree  was  duly  accepted  as  in- 
fallible, and  in  one  of  the  largest  cities  of  Italy  may  to-day 
be  seen  a  Christian  church  dedicated  to  this  saint.  On  its 
front  are  the  initials  of  his  Italianized  name;  over  its  main 
entrance  is  the  inscription  "Divo  Josafat  "  ;  and  within  it  is  an 
altar  dedicated  to  the  saint — above  this  being  a  pedestal 
bearing  his  name  and  supporting  a  large  statue  which  repre- 
sents him  as  a  youthful  prince  wearing  a  crown  and  contem- 
plating a  crucifix. 

Moreover,  relics  of  this  saint  were  found ;  bones  al- 
leged to  be  parts  of  his  skeleton,  having  been  presented  by  a 
Doge  of  Venice  to  a  King  of  Portugal,  are  now  treasured  at 
Antwerp. 

But  even  as  early  as  the  sixteenth  century  a  pregnant 
fact  regarding  this  whole  legend  was  noted  :  for  the  Portu- 
guese historian  Diego  Conto  showed  that  it  was  identical 
with  the  legend  of  Buddha.  Fortunately  for  the  historian, 
his  faith  was  so  robust  that  he  saw  in  this  resemblance  only 
a  trick  of  Satan  ;  the  life  of  Buddha  being,  in  his  opinion, 
merely  a  diabolic  counterfeit  of  the  life  of  Josaphat  centuries 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY   METHODS.  3S3 

before  the  latter  was  lived  or  written — just  as  good  Abbe 
Hue  saw  in  the  ceremonies  of  Buddhism  a  similar  anticipa- 
tory counterfeit  of  Christian  ritual. 

There  the  whole  matter  virtually  rested  for  about  three 
hundred  years — various  scholars  calling  attention  to  the 
legend  as  a  curiosity,  but  none  really  showing  its  true 
bearings— until,  in  1859,  Laboulaye  in  France,  Liebrecht  in 
Germany,  and  others  following  them,  demonstrated  that 
this  Christian  work  was  drawn  almost  literally  from  an 
early  biography  of  Buddha,  being  conformed  to  it  in  the 
most  minute  details,  not  only  of  events  but  of  phraseology  ; 
the  only  important  changes  being  that,  at  the  end  of  the 
various  experiences  showing  the  wretchedness  of  the  world, 
identical  with  those  ascribed  in  the  original  to  the  young 
Prince  Buddha,  the  hero,  instead  of  becoming  a  hermit,  be- 
comes a  Christian,  and  that  for  the  appellation  of  Buddha— 
"  Bodisat  " — is  substituted  the  more  scriptural  name  Jo- 
saphat. 

Thus  it  was  that,  by  virtue  of  the  infallibility  vouchsafed 
to  the  papacy  in  matters  of  faith  and  morals,  Buddha  became 
a  Christian  saint. 

Yet  these  were  by  no  means  the  most  pregnant  revela- 
tions. As  the  Buddhist  scriptures  were  more  fully  examined, 
there  were  disclosed  interesting  anticipations  of  statements 
in  later  sacred  books.  The  miraculous  conception  of  Buddha 
and  his  virgin  birth,  like  that  of  Horus  in  Egvpt  and  of 
Krishna  in  India;  the  previous  annunciation  to  his  mother 
Maja  ;  his  birth  during  a  journey  by  her;  the  star  appearing 
in  the  east,  and  the  angels  chanting  in  the  heavens  at  his 
birth;  his  temptation — all  these  and  a  multitude  of  other 
statements  were  full  of  suggestions  to  larger  thought  regard- 
ing the  development  of  sacred  literature  in  general.  Even 
the  eminent  Roman  Catholic  missionary  Bishop  Bigandet 
was  obliged  to  confess,  in  his  scholarly  life  of  Buddha,  these 
striking  similarities  between  the  Buddhist  scriptures  and 
those  which  it  was  his  mission  to  expound,  though  by 
this  honest  statement  his  own  further  promotion  was  ren- 
dered impossible.  Fausboll  also  found  the  storv  of  the 
judgment  of  Solomon  imbedded  in  Buddhist  folklore  ;  and 
Sir  Edwin   Arnold,  by  his  poem,  The  Light  of  Asia,  spread 


3§4 


FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 


far  and  wide  a  knowledge  of  the  anticipation  in  Buddhism 
of  some  ideas  which  down  to  a  recent  period  were  con- 
sidered distinctively  Christian.  Imperfect  as  the  revelations 
thus  made  of  an  evolution  of  religious  beliefs,  institutions, 
and  literature  still  are,  they  have  not  been  without  an  im- 
portant bearing  upon  the  newer  conception  of  our  own 
sacred  books :  more  and  more  manifest  has  become  the 
interdependence  of  all  human  development ;  more  and  more 
clear  the  truth  that  Christianity,  as  a  great  fact  in  man's  his- 
tory, is  not  dependent  for  its  life  upon  any  parasitic  growths 
of  myth  and  legend,  no  matter  how  beautiful  they  may  be.* 

*  For  Hue  and  Gabet,  see  Souvenirs  d'un  Voyage  dans  la  Tartarie,  le  Thibet, 
etla  Chine,  English  translation  by  Hazlitt,  London,  1851  ;  also  supplementary  work 
by  Hue.  For  Bishop  Bigandet,  see  his  Life  of  Buddha,  passim.  As  authority  for 
the  fact  that  his  book  was  condemned  at  Rome  and  his  own  promotion  prevented, 
the  present  writer  has  the  bishop's  own  statement.  For  notices  of  similarities  be- 
tween Buddhist  and  Christian  institutions,  ritual,  etc.,  see  Rhys  Davids's  Buddhism, 
London,  1894,  passim  ;  also  Lillie,  Buddhism  and  Christianity,  especially  chaps. 
ii  and  xi.  It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  understand  how  a  scholar  so  eminent  as  Mr. 
Rhys  Davids  should  have  allowed  the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge, 
which  published  his  book,  to  eliminate  all  the  interesting  details  regarding  the 
birth  of  Buddha,  and  to  give  so  fully  everything  that  seemed  to  tell  against  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  ;  cf.  p.  27  with  p.  246  et  sea.  For  more  thorough  presen- 
tation of  the  development  of  features  in  Buddhism  and  Brahmanism  which  antici- 
pate those  of  Christianity,  see  Schroeder,  Indiens  Literatur  und  Cultur,  Leipsic, 
1887,  especially  Vorlesung-  XXVII  and  following.  For  full  details  of  the  canoni- 
zation of  Buddha  under  the  name  of  St.  Josaphat,  see  Fausboll,  Buddhist  Birth 
Stories,  translated  by  Rhys  Davids,  London,  1880,  pp.  xxxvi  and  following  ;  also 
Prof.  Max  Miiller  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  July,  1890  ;  also  the  article 
Barlaam  and  Josaphat,  in  ninth  edition  of  the  Encyclopa-dia  Britannica.  For  the 
more  recent  and  full  accounts,  correcting  some  minor  details  in  the  foregoing  au- 
thorities, see  Kuhn,  Barlaam  und  Joasaph,  Munich,  1893,  especially  pp.  82,  83. 
For  a  very  thorough  discussion  of  the  whole  subject,  see  Zotenberg,  Notice  sur  le 
livre  de  Barlaam  et  Joasaph,  Paris,  1S86  ;  especially  for  arguments  fixing  date  of 
the  work,  see  parts  i  to  iii  ;  also  Gaston  Paris  in  the  Revue  de  Baris  for  June,  1895. 
For  the  transliteration  between  the  appellation  of  Buddha  and  the  name  of  the 
saint,  see  Fausboll  and  Sayce  as  above,  p.  xxxvii,  note  ;  and  for  the  multitude  of 
translations  of  the  work  ascribed  to  St.  John  of  Damascus,  see  Table  III,  on  p. 
xcv.  The  reader  who  is  curious  to  trace  up  a  multitude  of  the  myths  and  legends 
of  early  Hebrew  and  Christian  mythology  to  their  more  eastern  and  southern  sources 
can  do  so  in  Bible  Myths,  New  York,  1883.  The  present  writer  gladly  avails  him- 
self of  the  opportunity  to  thank  the  learned  Director  of  the  National  Library  at 
Palermo,  Monsignor  Marzo,  for  his  kindness  in  showing  him  the  very  interesting 
church  of  San  Giosafat  in  that  city  ;  and  to  the  custodians  of  the  church  for  their 
readiness  to  allow  photographs  of  the  saint  to  be  taken.  The  writer's  visit  was 
made  in  April,  1895,  and  copies  of  the  photographs  may  be  seen  in  the  library  of 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY   METHODS.  3S5 

No  less  important  was  the  closer  research  into  the  New 
Testament  during  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
To  go  into  the  subject  in  detail  would  be  beyond  the  scope 
of  this  work,  but  a  few  of  the  main  truths  which  it  brought 
before  the  world  may  be  here  summarize I.* 

By  the  new  race  of  Christian  scholars  it  has  been  clearly 
shown  that  the  first  three  Gospels,  which,  down  to  the  close 
of  the  last  century,  were  so  constantly  declared  to  be  three 
independent  testimonies  agreeing  as  to  the  events  recorded, 
are  neither  independent  of  each  other  nor  in  that  sort  of 
agreement  which  was  formerly  asserted.  All  biblical  schol- 
ars of  any  standing,  even  the  most  conservative,  have  come 
to  admit  that  all  three  took  their  rise  in  the  same  original 
sources,  growing  by  the  accretions  sure  to  come  as  time 
went  on — accretions  sometimes  useful  and  often  beautiful, 
but  in  no  inconsiderable  degree  ideas  and  even  narratives 
inherited  from  older  religions :  it  is  also  fullv  acknowledged 
that  to  this  growth  process  are  due  certain  contradictions 
which  can  not  otherwise  be  explained.  As  to  the  fourth 
Gospel,  exquisitely  beautiful  as  large  portions  of  it  are,  there 
has  been  growing  steadily  and  irresistibly  the  conviction, 
even  among  the  most  devout  scholars,  that  it  has  no  right 
to  the  name,  and  does  not  really  give  the  ideas  of  St.  John, 
but  that  it  represents  a  mixture  of  Greek  philosophy  with 
Jewish  theology,  and  that  its  final  form,  which  one  of  the 
most  eminent  among  recent  Christian  scholars  has  charac- 
terized as  "an  unhistorical  product  of  abstract  reflection," 
is   mainly  due  to  some  gifted  representative  or   represent a- 

Cornell  University.  As  to  the  more  rare  editions  of  Barlaam  and Josaphat,  a  copy 
of  the  Icelandic  translation  is  to  he  seen  in  the  remarkahle  collection  of  Prof. 
Willard  Fiske,  at  Florence.  As  to  the  influence  of  these  translations,  it  may  be 
noted  that  when  young  John  Kuncewicz,  afterward  a  Polish  archbishop,  became  a 
monk,  he  took  the  name  of  the  sainted  Prince  Josafat  ;  and,  having  fallen  a  victim 
to  one  of  the  innumerable  murderous  affrays  of  the  seventeenth  century  between 
different  sorts  of  fanatics — Greek,  Catholic,  and  Protestant — in  Poland,  he  also 
was  finally  canonized  under  that  name,  evidently  as  a  means  of  annoying  the 
Russian  Government.  (See  Contieri,  Vita  di  S.  Giosafat,  Arcivescovo  c  Martini 
Ruteno,  Roma,  1S67.) 

*  For  a  brief  but  thorough  statement  of  the  work  of  Strauss,  Baur,  and  the  earlier 
cruder  efforts  in  New  Testament  exegesis,  see  Pfleiderer,  as  already  cited,  book   ii, 
chap,  i  ;  and  for  the  later  work  on  Supernatural  Religion  and  Lightfoot's  answer, 
ibid.,  book  iv,  chap.  ii. 
53 


386  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

tives  of  the  Alexandrian  school.  Bitter  as  the  resistance 
to  this  view  has  been,  it  has  during  the  last  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century  won  its  way  more  and  more  to  ac- 
knowledgment. A  careful  examination  made  in  1893  by  a 
competent  Christian  scholar  showed  facts  which  are  best 
given  in  his  own  words,  as  follows :  "  In  the  period  of  thirty 
years  ending  in  i860,  of  the  fifty  great  authorities  in  this 
line, /our  to  one  were  in  favour  of  the  Johannine  authorship. 
Of  those  who  in  that  period  had  advocated  this  traditional 
position,  one  quarter — and  certainly  the  very  greatest — finally 
changed  their  position  to  the  side  of  a  late  date  and  non- 
Johannine  authorship.  Of  those  who  have  come  into  this 
field  of  scholarship  since  about  i860,  some  forty  men  of  the 
first  class,  two  thirds  reject  the  traditional  theory  wholly  or 
very  largely.  Of  those  who  have  contributed  important 
articles  to  the  discussion  from  about  1880  to  1890,  about  two 
to  one  reject  the  Johannine  authorship  of  the  Gospel  in  its 
present  shape — that  is  to  say,  while  forty  years  ago  great 
scholars  were  /our  to  one  in  favour  0/  they  are  now  two  to  one 
against,  the  claim  that  the  apostle  John  wrote  this  Gospel  as 
we  have  it.  Again,  one  half  of  those  on  the  conservative 
side  to-day — scholars  like  Weiss,  Beyschlag,  Sanday,  and 
Reynolds — admit  the  existence  of  a  dogmatic  intent  and  an 
ideal  element  in  this  Gospel,  so  that  we  do  not  have  Jesus's 
thought  in  his  exact  words,  but  only  in  substance."  * 

In  1 88 1  came  an  event  of  great  importance  as  regards 
the  development  of  a  more  frank  and  open  dealing  with 
scriptural  criticism.  In  that  year  appeared  the  Revised 
Version  of  the  New  Testament.  It  was  exceedingly  cau- 
tious and  conservative  ;  but  it  had  the  vast  merit  of  being 
absolutely  conscientious.     One  thing  showed,  in  a  striking 

*  For  the  citations  given  regarding  the  development  of  thought  in  relation  to 
the  fourth  Gospel,  see  Crooker,  The  New  Bible  and  its  Uses,  Boston,  1893,  pp.  29, 
30.  For  the  characterization  of  St.  John's  Gospel  above  referred  to,  see  Robertson 
Smith  in  the  Encyc.  Brit.,  gth  edit.,  art.  Bible,  p.  642.  For  a  very  careful  and 
candid  summary  of  the  reasons  which  are  gradually  leading  the  more  eminent  among 
the  newer  scholars  to  give  up  the  Johannine  authorship  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  see 
Schiirer,  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  September,  1891.  American  readers,  re- 
garding this  and  the  whole  series  of  subjects  of  which  this  forms  a  part,  may  most 
profitably  study  the  Rev.  Dr.  Cone's  Gospel  Criticism  and  Historic  Christianity, 
one  of  the  most  lucid  and  judicial  of  recent  works  in  this  field. 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY   METHODS.  3S7 

way,  ethical  progress  in  theological  methods.  Although 
all  but  one  of  the  English  revisers  represented  Trinitarian 
bodies,  they  rejected  the  two  great  proof  texts  which  had  so 
long  been  accounted  essential  bulwarks  of  Trinitarian  doc- 
trine. Thus  disappeared  at  last  from  the  Epistle  of  St.  John 
the  text  of  the  Three  Witnesses,  which  had  for  centuries 
held  its  place  in  spite  of  its  absence  from  all  the  earlier  im- 
portant manuscripts,  and  of  its  rejection  in  later  times  by 
Erasmus,  Luther,  Isaac  Newton,  Porson,  and  a  long  line  of 
the  greatest  biblical  scholars.  And  with  this  was  thrown 
out  the  other  like  unto  it  in  spurious  origin  and  zealous  in- 
tent, that  interpolation  of  the  word  "  God  "  in  the  six- 
teenth verse  of  the  third  chapter  of  the  First  Epistle  to 
Timothy,  which  had  for  ages  served  as  a  warrant  for 
condemning  some  of  the  noblest  of  Christians,  even  such 
men  as  Newton  and  Milton  and  Locke  and  Priestley  and 
Channing. 

Indeed,  so  honest  were  the  revisers  that  they  substi- 
tuted the  correct  reading  of  Luke  ii,  33,  in  place  of  the 
time  -  honoured  corruption  in  the  King  James  version 
which  had  been  thought  necessary  to  safeguard  the 
dogma  of  the  virgin  birth  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Thus 
came  the  true  reading,  " His  father  and  his  mother,"  in- 
stead of  the  old  piously  fraudulent  words  "Joseph  and  his 
mother." 

An  even  more  important  service  to  the  new  and  better 
growth  of  Christianity  was  the  virtual  setting  aside  of  the 
last  twelve  verses  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Mark  ;  for 
among  these  stood  that  sentence  which  has  cost  the  world 
more  innocent  blood  than  any  other — the  words  "  He  that 
believeth  not  shall  be  damned."  From  this  source  had  logic- 
ally grown  the  idea  that  the  intellectual  rejection  of  this  or 
that  dogma  which  dominant  theology  had  happened  at  any 
given  time  to  pronounce  essential,  since  such  rejection  must 
bring  punishment  infinite  in  agony  and  duration,  is  a  crime 
to  be  prevented  at  any  cost  of  finite  cruelty.  Still  another 
service  rendered  to  humanity  by  the  revisers  was  in  substi- 
tuting a  new  and  correct  rendering  for  the  old  reading  of 
the  famous  text  regarding  the  inspiration  of  Scripture,  which 
had  for  ages  done  so  much  to  make  our  sacred  books  a  fetich. 


388  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

By  this  more  correct  reading  the  revisers  gave  a  new  char- 
ter to  liberty  in  biblical  research.* 

Most  valuable,  too,  have  been  studies  during  the  latter 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  upon  the  formation  of  the 
canon  of  Scripture.  The  result  of  these  has  been  to  substi- 
tute something  far  better  for  that  conception  of  our  biblical 
literature,  as  forming  one  book  handed  out  of  the  clouds  by 
the  Almighty,  which  had  been  so  long  practically  the  ac- 
cepted view  among  probably  the  majority  of  Christians. 
Reverent  scholars  have  demonstrated  our  sacred  literature 
to  be  a  growth  in  obedience  to  simple  laws  natural  and  his- 
torical ;  they  have  shown  how  some  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  accepted  as  sacred,  centuries  before  our  era,  and 
how  others  gradually  gained  sanctity,  in  some  cases  only 
fully  acquiring  it  long  after  the  establishment  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  The  same  slow  growth  has  also  been  shown 
in  the  New  Testament  canon.  It  has  been  demonstrated 
that  the  selection  of  the  books  composing  it,  and  their  sepa- 
ration from  the  vast  mass  of  spurious  gospels,  epistles,  and 
apocalytic  literature  was  a  gradual  process,  and,  indeed,  that 


*  The  texts  referred  to  as  most  beneficially  changed  by  the  revisers  are  I  John 
v,  7,  and  I  Timothy  iii,  16.  Mention  may  also  be  made  of  the  fact  that  the  American 
revision  gave  up  the  Trinitarian  version  of  Romans  ix,  5,  and  that  even  their  more 
conservative  British  brethren,  while  leaving  it  in  the  text,  discredited  it  in  the 
margin. 

Though  the  revisers  thought  it  better  not  to  suppress  altogether  the  last  twelve 
verses  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel,  they  softened  the  word  "damned"  to  "condemned," 
and  separated  them  from  the  main  Gospel,  adding  a  note  stating  that  "  the  two 
oldest  Greek  manuscripts,  and  some  other  authorities,  omit  from  verse  nine  to 
the  end  "  ;  and  that  "  some  other  authorities  have  a  different  ending  to  this  Gos- 
pel." 

The  resistance  of  staunch  high  churchmen  of  the  older  type  even  to  so  mild  a 
reform  as  the  first  change  above  noted  may  be  exemplified  by  a  story  told  of  Phil- 
potts,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  A  kindly 
clergyman  reading  the  invitation  to  the  holy  communion,  and  thinking  that  so  af- 
fectionate a  call  was  disfigured  by  the  harsh  phrase  "  eateth  and  drinketh  to  his  own 
damnation,"  ventured  timidly  to  substitute  the  word  "  condemnation."  Thereupon 
the  bishop,  who  was  kneeling  with  the  rest  of  the  congregation,  threw  up  his  head 
and  roared  "damnation!"  The  story  is  given  in  T.  A.  Trollope's  What  I  Re- 
member, vol.  i,  p.  444.  American  churchmen  may  well  rejoice  that  the  fathers  of 
the  American  branch  of  the  Anglican  Church  were  wise  enough  and  Christian 
enough  to  omit  from  their  Prayer  Book  this  damnatory  clause,  as  well  as  the  Com- 
mination  Service  and  the  Athanasian  Creed. 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY  METHODS. 


;39 


the  rejection  of  some  books  and  the  acceptance  of  others  was 
accidental,  if  anything  is  accidental. 

So,  too,  scientific  biblical  research  has,  as  we  have  seen, 
been  obliged  to  admit  the  existence  of  much  mythical  and 
legendary  matter,  as  a  setting  for  the  great  truths  not  only 
of  the  Old  Testament  but  of  the  New.  It  has  also  shown, 
by  the  comparative  study  of  literatures,  the  process  by  which 
some  books  were  compiled  and  recompiled,  adorned  with 
beautiful  utterances,  strengthened  or  weakened  by  altera- 
tions and  interpolations  expressing  the  views  of  the  pos- 
sessors or  transcribers,  and  attributed  to  personages  who 
could  not  possibly  have  written  them.  The  presentation 
of  these  things  has  greatly  weakened  that  sway  of  mere 
dogma  which  has  so  obscured  the  simple  teachings  of 
Christ  himself;  for  it  has  shown  that  the  more  we  know 
of  our  sacred  books,  the  less  certain  we  become  as  to  the 
authenticity  of  "  proof  texts,"  and  it  has  disengaged  more 
and  more,  as  the  only  valuable  residuum,  like  the  mass  of 
gold  at  the  bottom  of  the  crucible,  the  personality,  spirit, 
teaching,  and  ideals  of  the  blessed  Founder  of  Christian- 
ity. More  and  more,  too,  the  new  scholarship  has  devel- 
oped the  conception  of  the  New  Testament  as,  like  the  Old, 
the  growth  of  literature  in  obedience  to  law — a  concep- 
tion which  in  all  probability  will  give  it  its  strongest  hold 
on  the  coming  centuries.  In  making  this  revelation  Chris- 
tian scholarship  has  by  no  means  done  work  mainly  destruc- 
tive. It  has,  indeed,  swept  away  a  mass  of  noxious  growths, 
but  it  has  at  the  same  time  cleared  the  ground  for  a  better 
growth  of  Christianity— a  growth  through  which  already 
pulsates  the  current  of  a  nobler  life.  It  has  forever  destroyed 
the  contention  of  scholars  like  those  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury who  saw,  in  the  multitude  of  irreconcilable  discrepan- 
cies between  various  biblical  statements,  merely  evidences 
of  priestcraft  and  intentional  fraud.  The  new  scholarship 
has  shown  that  even  such  absolute  contradictions  as  those 
between  the  accounts  of  the  early  life  of  Jesus  by  Matthew 
and  Luke,  and  between  the  date  of  the  crucifixion  and  de- 
tails of  the  resurrection  in  the  first  three  Gospels  and  in  the 
fourth,  and  other  discrepancies  hardly  less  serious,  do  not 
destroy  the  historical  character  of  the  narrative.     Even  the 


3QO  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

hopelessly  conflicting  genealogies  of  the  Saviour  and  the 
evidently  mythical  accretions  about  the  simple  facts  of  his 
birth  and  life  are  thus  full  of  interest  when  taken  as  a  natu- 
ral literary  development  in  obedience  to  the  deepest  re- 
ligious feeling.* 

Among  those  who  have  wrought  most  effectively  to 
bring  the  leaders  of  thought  in  the  English-speaking  nations 
to  this  higher  conception,  Matthew  Arnold  should  not  be 
forgotten.  By  poetic  insight,  broad  scholarship,  pungent 
statement,  pithy  argument,  and  an  exquisitely  lucid  style, 
he  aided  effectually  during  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  bringing  the  work  of  specialists  to  bear  upon 
the  development  of  a  broader  and  deeper  view.  In  the 
light  of  his  genius  a  conception  of  our  sacred  books  at 
the  same  time  more  literary  as  well  as  more  scientific  has 
grown  widely  and  vigorously,  while  the  older  view  which 
made  of  them  a  fetich  and  a  support  for  unchristian  dogmas 
has  been  more  and  more  thrown  into  the  background.  The 
contributions  to  these  results  by  the  most  eminent  professors 
at  the  great  Christian  universities  of  the  English-speaking 
world,  Oxford  and  Cambridge  taking  the  lead,  are  most 
hopeful  signs  of  a  new  epoch.  Very  significant  also  is  a 
change  in  the  style  of  argument  against  the  scientific  view. 
Leading  supporters  of  the  older  opinions  see  more  and  more 
clearly  the  worthlessness  of  rhetoric  against  ascertained 
fact :  mere  dogged  resistance  to  cogent  argument  evidently 
avails  less  and  less ;  and  the  readiness  of  the  more  prominent 
representatives  of  the  older  thought  to  consider  opposing 
arguments,  and  to  acknowledge  any  force  they  may  have, 
is  certainly  of  good  omen.     The  concessions  made  in  Lux 

*  Among  the  newer  English  works  on  the  canon  of  Scripture,  especially  as  re- 
gards the  Old  Testament,  see  Ryle  in  work  cited.  As  to  the  evidences  of  frequent 
mutilations  of  the  New  Testament  text,  as  well  as  of  frequent  charge  of  changing 
texts  made  against  each  other  by  early  Christian  writers,  see  Reuss,  History  of  the 
New  Testament,  vol.  ii,  §  362.  For  a  reverent  and  honest  treatment  of  some  of  the 
discrepancies  and  contradictions  which  are  absolutely  irreconcilable,  see  Crooker, 
as  above,  appendix  ;  also  Cone,  Gospel  Criticism  and  Historic  Christianity,  espe- 
cially chap,  iii  ;  also  Matthew  Arnold,  Literature  and  Dogma,  and  God  and  the 
Bible,  especially  chap,  vi  ;  and  for  a  brief  but  full  showing  of  them  in  a  judicial 
and  kindly  spirit,  see  Laing,  Problems  of  the  Future,  chap,  ix,  on  The  Historical 
Element  in  the  Gospels. 


VICTORY  OF  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  LITERARY   METHODS.    ?9l 

Mundi  regarding-  scriptural  myths  and  legends  have  been 
already  mentioned. 

Significant  also  has  been  the  increasing  reprobation  in 
the  Church  itself  of  the  profound  though  doubtless  unwit- 
ting immoralities  of  reconcilers.  The  castigation  which  fol- 
lowed the  exploits  of  the  greatest  of  these  in  our  own  time 

Mr.  Gladstone,  at  the  hands  of  Prof.  Huxley — did  much 
to  complete  a  work  in  which  such  eminent  churchmen  as 
Stanley,  Farrar,  Sanday,  Cheyne,  Driver,  and  Sayce  had 
rendered  good  service. 

Typical  among  these  evidences  of  a  better  spirit  in  con. 
troversy  has  been  the  treatment  of  the  question  regarding 
mistaken  quotations  from  the  Old  Testament  in  the  New, 
and  especially  regarding  quotations  by  Christ  himself.  For 
a  time  this  was  apparently  the  most  difficult  of  all  matters 
dividing  the  two  forces ;  but  though  here  and  there  appear 
champions  of  tradition,  like  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  effec- 
tual resistance  to  the  new  view  has  virtually  ceased  ;  in  one 
way  or  another  the  most  conservative  authorities  have  ac- 
cepted the  undoubted  truth  revealed  by  a  simple  scientific 
method.  Their  arguments  have  indeed  been  varied.  While 
some  have  fallen  back  upon  Le  Clerc's  contention  that 
"  Christ  did  not  come  to  teach  criticism  to  the  Jews,"  and 
others  upon  Paley's  argument  that  the  Master  shaped  his 
statements  in  accordance  with  the  ideas  of  his  time,  others 
have  taken  refuge  in  scholastic  statements — among  them 
that  of  Irenasus  regarding  "a  quiescence  of  the  divine 
word,"  or  the  somewhat  startling  explanation  by  sundry 
recent  theologians  that  "our  Lord  emptied  himself  of  his 
Godhead."* 

Nor  should  there  be  omitted  a  tribute  to  the  increasing 

*  For  Matthew  Arnold,  see,  besides  his  Literature  and  Dogma,  his  St.  Paul 
and  Protestantism.  As  to  the  quotations  in  the  New  Testament  from  the  Old,  see 
Toy,  Quotations  in  the  New  Testament,  1889,  p.  72  ;  also  Kuenen,  The  Prophets 
and  Prophecy  in  Israel.  For  Le  Clerc's  mode  of  dealing  with  the  argument  regard- 
ing quotations  from  the  Old  Testament  in  the  New,  see  earlier  parts  of  the  present 
chapter.  For  Paley's  mode,  see  his  Evidences,  part  iii,  chapter  iii.  For  the  more 
scholastic  expressions  from  Ircnacus  and  others,  see  Gore,  Hampton  Lectures,  1891, 
especially  note  on  p.  267.  For  a  striking  passage  on  the  general  subject,  see  B.  W. 
Bacon,  Genesis  of  Genesis,  p.  33,  ending  with  the  words,  "  We  must  decline  to  stake 
the  authority  of  Jesus  Christ  on  a  question  of  literary  criticism." 


3Q2  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

courtesy  shown  in  late  years  by  leading  supporters  of  the 
older  view.  During  the  last  two  decades  of  the  present 
century  there  has  been  a  most  happy  departure  from  the 
older  method  of  resistance,  first  by  plausibilities,  next  by 
epithets,  and  finally  by  persecution.  To  the  bitterness  of 
the  attacks  upon  Darwin,  the  Essayists  and  Reviewers,  and 
Bishop  Colenso,  have  succeeded,  among  really  eminent 
leaders,  a  far  better  method  and  tone.  While  Matthew 
Arnold  no  doubt  did  much  in  commending  "sweet  reason- 
ableness" to  theological  controversialists,  Mr.  Gladstone, 
by  his  perfect  courtesy  to  his  opponents,  even  when  smart- 
ing under  their  heaviest  blows,  has  set  a  most  valuable 
example.  Nor  should  the  spirit  shown  by  Bishop  Ellicott, 
leading  a  forlorn  hope  for  the  traditional  view,  pass  without 
a  tribute  of  respect.  Truly  pathetic  is  it  to  see  this  vener- 
able and  learned  prelate,  one  of  the  most  eminent  represent- 
atives of  the  older  biblical  research,  even  when  giving  sol- 
emn warnings  against  the  newer  criticisms,  and  under  all 
the  temptations  of  ex  cathedra  utterance,  remaining  mild  and 
gentle  and  just  in  the  treatment  of  adversaries  whose  ideas 
he  evidently  abhors.  Happily,  he  is  comforted  by  the  faith 
that  Christianitv  will  survive ;  and  this  faith  his  opponents 
fully  share.* 

*  As  examples  of  courtesy  between  theologic  opponents  may  be  cited  the  con- 
troversy between  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Prof.  Huxley,  Principal  Gore's  Bampton  Lec- 
tures for  1 891,  and  Bishop  Ellicott's  Charges,  published  in  1893. 

To  the  fact  that  the  suppression  of  personal  convictions  among  "  the  enlight- 
ened "  did  not  cease  with  the  Medicean  popes  there  are  many  testimonies.  One 
especially  curious  was  mentioned  to  the  present  writer  by  a  most  honoured  diplo- 
matist and  scholar  at  Rome.  While  this  gentleman  was  looking  over  the  books  of 
an  eminent  cardinal,  recently  deceased,  he  noticed  a  series  of  octavos  bearing  on 
their  backs  the  title  "Acta  Apostolorum"  Surprised  at  such  an  extension  of  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles,  he  opened  a  volume  and  found  the  series  to  be  the  works  of 
Voltaire.  As  to  a  similar  condition  of  things  in  the  Church  of  England  may  be 
cited  the  following  from  Froude's  Erasmus  :  "  I  knew  various  persons  of  high  repu- 
tation a  few  years  ago  who  thought  at  bottom  very  much  as  Bishop  Colenso  thought, 
who  nevertheless  turned  and  rent  him  to  clear  their  own  reputations — which  they 
did  not  succeed  in  doing."     See  work  cited,  close  of  Lecture  XI. 


RECONSTRUCTIVE    FORCE   OF   SCIENTIFIC   CRITICISM. 


393 


VI.    RECONSTRUCTIVE    FORCE   OF   SCIENTIFIC   CRITICISM. 

For  all  this  dissolving  away  of  traditional  opinions  regard- 
ing our  sacred  literature,  there  has  been  a  cause  far  more 
general  and  powerful  than  any  which  has  been  given,  for  it 
is  a  cause  surrounding  and  permeating  all.  This  is  simply 
the  atmosphere  of  thought  engendered  by  the  development 
of  all  sciences  during  the  last  three  centuries. 

Vast  masses  of  myth,  legend,  marvel,  and  dogmatic  asser- 
tion, coming  into  this  atmosphere,  have  been  dissolved  and 
are  now  dissolving  quietly  away  like  icebergs  drifted  into 
the  Gulf  Stream.  In  earlier  days,  when  some  critic  in 
advance  of  his  time  insisted  that  Moses  could  not  have 
written  an  account  embracing  the  circumstances  of  his  own 
death,  it  was  sufficient  to  answer  that  Moses  was  a  prophet; 
if  attention  was  called  to  the  fact  that  the  great  early 
prophets,  by  all  which  they  did  and  did  not  do,  showed  that 
there  could  not  have  existed  in  their  time  any  "  Levitical 
code,"  a  sufficient  answer  was  "  mystery  "  ;  and  if  the  dis- 
crepancy was  noted  between  the  two  accounts  of  creation  in 
Genesis,  or  between  the  genealogies  or  the  dates  of  the 
crucifixion  in  the  Gospels,  the  cogent  reply  was  "infidelity." 
But  the  thinking  world  has  at  last  been  borne  by  the  general 
development  of  a  scientific  atmosphere  beyond  that  kind  of 
refutation. 

If,  in  the  atmosphere  generated  by  the  earlier  developed 
sciences,  the  older  growths  of  biblical  interpretation  have 
drooped  and  withered  and  are  evidently  perishing,  new  and 
better  growths  have  arisen  with  roots  running  down  into  the 
newer  sciences.  Comparative  Anthropology  in  general,  by 
showing  that  various  early  stages  of  belief  and  observance, 
once  supposed  to  be  derived  from  direct  revelation  from 
heaven  to  the  Hebrews,  are  still  found  as  arrested  devel- 
opments among  various  savage  and  barbarous  tribes ;  Com- 
parative Mythology  and  Folklore,  by  showing  that  ideas  and 
beliefs  regarding  the  Supreme  Power  in  the  universe  are 
progressive,  and  not  less  in  Judea  than  in  other  parts  of  the 
world ;  Comparative  Religion  and  Literature,  by  searching 
out  and  laying  side  by  side  those  main  facts  in  the  upward 
struggle  of  humanity  which  show  that  the  Israelites,  like 


394  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

other  gifted  peoples,  rose  gradually,  through  ghost  worship, 
fetichism,  and  polytheism,  to  higher  theological  levels;  and 
that,  as  they  thus  rose,  their  conceptions  and  statements 
regarding  the  God  they  worshipped  became  nobler  and 
better — all  these  sciences  are  giving  a  new  solution  to  those 
problems  which  dogmatic  theology  has  so  long  laboured 
in  vain  to  solve.  While  researches  in  these  sciences  have 
established  the  fact  that  accounts  formerly  supposed  to  be 
special  revelations  to  Jews  and  Christians  are  but  repeti- 
tions of  widespread  legends  dating  from  far  earlier  civiliza- 
tions, and  that  beliefs  formerly  thought  fundamental  to 
Judaism  and  Christianity  are  simply  based  on  ancient  myths, 
they  have  also  begun  to  impress  upon  the  intellect  and  con- 
science of  the  thinking  world  the  fact  that  the  religious  and 
moral  truths  thus  disengaged  from  the  old  masses  of  myth 
and  legend  are  all  the  more  venerable  and  authoritative, 
and  that  all  individual  or  national  life  of  any  value  must  be 
vitalized  by  them.* 

If,  then,  modern  science  in  general  has  acted  powerfully 
to  dissolve  away  the  theories  and  dogmas  of  the  older  theo- 
logic  interpretation,  it  has  also  been  active  in  a  reconstruc- 
tion and  recrystallization  of  truth  ;  and  very  powerful  in  this 
reconstruction  have  been  the  evolution  doctrines  which  have 
grown  out  of  the  thought  and  work  of  men  like  Darwin  and 
Spencer. 

In  the  light  thus  obtained  the  sacred  text  has  been  trans- 
formed :  out  of  the  old  chaos  has  come  order;  out  of  the 
old  welter  of  hopelessly  conflicting  statements  in  religion  and 
morals  has  come,  in  obedience  to  this  new  conception  of 
development,  the  idea  of  a  sacred  literature  which  mirrors 
the  most  striking  evolution  of  morals  and  religion  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  race.  Of  all  the  sacred  writings  of  the  world,  it 
shows  us  our  own  as  the  most  beautiful  and  the  most  pre- 


*  For  plaintive  lamentations  over  the  influence  of  this  atmosphere  of  scientific 
thought  upon  the  most  eminent  contemporary  Christian  scholars,  see  the  Christus 
Comprobator,  by  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and  Bristol,  London,  1893,  and  the  article 
in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  May,  1892,  by  the  Bishop  of  Colchester,  passim. 
For  some  less  known  examples  of  sacred  myths  and  legends  inherited  from  ancient 
civilizations,  see  Lenormant,  Les  Origines  de  VHistoire,  passim,  but  especially 
chaps,  ii,  iv,  v,  vi  ;  see  also  Goldziher. 


RECONSTRUCTIVE   FORCE   OF   SCIENTIFIC   CRITICISM.   395 

cious ;  exhibiting  to  us  the  most  complete  religious  develop- 
ment to  which  humanity  has  attained,  and  holding  before  us 
the  loftiest  ideals  which  our  race  has  known.  Thus  it  is  that, 
with  the  keys  furnished  by  this  new  race  of  biblical  scholars, 
the  way  has  been  opened  to  treasures  of  thought  which  have- 
been  inaccessible  to  theologians  for  two  thousand  years. 

As  to  the  Divine  Power  in  the  universe  :  these  interpreters 
have  shown  how,  beginning  with  the  tribal  god  of  the  He- 
brews— one  among  many  jealous,  fitful,  unseen,  local  sover- 
eigns of  Asia  Minor — the  higher  races  have  been  borne  on 
to  the  idea  of  the  just  Ruler  of  the  whole  earth,  as  revealed 
by  the  later  and  greater  prophets  of  Israel,  and  finally  to  the 
belief  in  the  Universal  Father,  as  best  revealed  in  the  New 
Testament.  As  to  man:  beginning  with  men  after  Jehovah's 
own  heart — cruel,  treacherous,  revengeful — we  are  borne  on 
to  an  ideal  of  men  who  do  right  for  right's  sake  ;  who  search 
and  speak  the  truth  for  truth's  sake ;  who  love  others  as 
themselves.  As  to  the  world  at  large:  the  races  dominant 
in  religion  and  morals  have  been  lifted  from  the  idea  of  a 
"chosen  people"  stimulated  and  abetted  by  their  tribal  god 
in  every  sort  of  cruelty  and  injustice,  to  the  conception  of  a 
vast  community  in  which  the  fatherhood  of  God  overarches 
all,  and  the  brotherhood  of  man  permeates  all. 

Thus,  at  last,  out  of  the  old  conception  of  our  Bible  as  a 
collection  of  oracles— a  mass  of  entangling  utterances,  fruit- 
ful in  wrangling  interpretations,  which  have  given  to  the 
world  long  and  weary  ages  of  "  hatred,  malice,  and  all  un- 
charitableness  "  ;  of  fetichism,  subtlety,  and  pomp  ;  of  tyranny, 
bloodshed,  and  solemnly  constituted  imposture;  of  every- 
thing which  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  most  abhorred— has  been 
gradually  developed  through  the  centuries,  by  the  labours, 
sacrifices,  and  even  the  martyrdom  of  a  long  succession  of 
men  of  God,  the  conception  of  it  as  a  sacred  literature— a 
growth  only  possible  under  that  divine  light  which  the  vari- 
ous orbs  of  science  have  done  so  much  to  bring  into  the  mind 
and  heart  and  soul  of  man— a  revelation,  not  of  the  Fall  of 
Man,  but  of  the  Ascent  of  Man— an  exposition,  not  of  tem- 
porary dogmas  and  observances,  but  of  the  Eternal  Law  of 
Righteousness— the  one  upward  path  for  individuals  and  for 
nations.     No  longer  an  oracle,  good  for  the  "  lower  orders  " 


396  FROM  THE  DIVINE  ORACLES  TO  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM. 

to  accept,  but  to  be  quietly  sneered  at  by  "  the  enlightened  " 
—no  longer  a  fetich,  whose  defenders  must  become  perse 
cutors  or  reconcilers,  or  "apologists";  but  a  most  fruitful 
fact,  which  religion  and  science  may  accept  as  a  source  of 
strength  to  both. 


INDEX. 


Aaron,  plague  stayed  by  prayers  of,  ii, 
68. 

Abbeville,  prehistoric  remains  found 
near,  i,  271-273. 

Abbott,  Prof.,  specimens  from  the  drift  at 
Trenton  in  the  collection  of,  i,  280, 
note. 

Abd  Allatif,  on  the  natural  history  of 
Egypt,  i,  37- 

Abel,  Karl,  his  work  in  philology,  ii,  203. 

Abelard,  his  theory  of  insanity,  ii,  104. 
His  attempt  to  employ  reason  in  inter- 
preting the  Scriptures,  302.  Cited, 
303,  note. 

Aben  Ezra,  on  the  authorship  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch, ii,  313.  His  interpretation  of 
Solomon's  Song,  326. 

Abgarus,  letter  of  Christ  to,  proved  a 
fraud,  ii,  303,  316. 

Abimelech,  his  position  in  Eusebius's 
chronological  tables,  i,  250. 

Abiram,  God's  punishment  of,  i,  334. 

Abraham,  appearance  of  a  star  at  his 
birth,  i,  172.  Imprint  of  his  feet  on 
stones,  ii,  212.  His  country  and  kin- 
dred, allegorical  signification  of,  294. 

Abraham,  St.,  his  faith  an  evidence  of  his 
holiness,  ii,  69. 

Abridgment  of  the  Records  in  the  Toiver 
of  London,  cited,  ii,  269,  note. 

Absalom,  identification  of  the  tree  on 
which  he  was  hanged,  ii,  240. 

Abydos,  list  of  kings  in  the  temples  at,  i, 
258. 

Abyssinia,  epidemics  of  dancing  in,  ii, 
163. 

Academia,  Cardinal    Manning's  address 
before  the,  i,  71.    Foundation  of  the,  72. 
Academy,  cited,  i,  86,  note. 

Academy  of  the   Lincei,  hostility  of  the 

Pope  to,  i,  393,  394. 
Academy  of  Music,  erection  of,  by  Na- 
poleon III,  ii,  93. 
Academy  of  Sciences  in    France,  i,   41. 
Attempt  to  found  one  at  Vienna,  58. 

39 


Academy  for  the  Study  of  Nature,  foun- 
dation of,  at  Naples,  i,  41. 

Accademia  del  Cimento  in  Italy,  i,  41. 
Theological  opposition  to,  i,  393. 

Acias,  Acosta  on,  i,  46. 

Acosta,  Emanuel,  collection  of  letters 
published  by,  ii,  8,  9,  12.  His  com- 
mentaries, 17,  18.     Cited,  11,  note. 

Acosta,  Joseph,  on  the  distribution  of 
animals,  i,  45,  46.  On  Lactantius's  ar- 
guments regarding  the  antipodes,  no, 
note.  His  Natural  and  Moral  History 
of  the  Indies,  125.  His  declaration  re- 
garding the  poles  of  the  heavens,  125. 
On  the  absence  of  miracles  in  Xavier's 
career,  ii,  9,  10,  19,  21.  His  views  on 
the  use  of  cocaine,  61.  Cited,  i,  4'), 
note  ;  105,  note  ;  no,  note ;  126,  note  ; 
ii,  10,  note. 

Acropolis,  imprint  of  Poseidon's  trident 
on,  ii,  211. 

Acta  Conciliorum,  cited,  i,  3S6,  note ;  ii, 
45,  note. 

Acta  Sanctorum,  cited,  ii,  28,  note  ;  41, 
note  ;  73,  note. 

Acts,  cited,  i,  374,  note;   ii,  101,  note. 

Adam,  representation  of  God  extracting 
Eve  from  his  side,  i,  26.  Provision 
made  for  sacrifice  of  animals  by,  27. 
His  coat  made  by  the  Almighty,  27. 
His  naming  of  the  animals,  31.  Iden- 
tification of  the  cavern  he  inhabited 
after  the  expulsion  from  Eden,  38  ;  ii, 
240.  Certain  creatures  not  named  by, 
i,  42.  Scepticism  in  regard  to  his 
naming  all  the  animals,  44,  47,  54. 
Wilberforce  on  the  fall  of,  70.  Origin 
of  language  used  by,  ii,  io<),  17M,  204. 
His  naming  of  the  animals,  195.  Fishes 
not  named  by,  196.  Invention  of  let- 
ters ascribed  to,  197.  Crater  filled  by 
the  tears  of,  214. 
Adams,  C.    K.,  cited,  i,  no,  note;   113, 

note. 
Adams,  John,  on   the  prejudice  against 


39§ 


INDEX. 


the  lightning-rod,  i,  366.     Cited,  367, 
note. 
Adams,  Mrs.  John,  on  the  Canterbury 

Cathedral,  ii,  334,  note. 
Adams,  W.  E.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 
Adams,  W.  H.  D.,  cited,  ii,  49,  note. 
Adams's    Dictionary   of   all    Religions, 

cited,  ii,  157,  note. 
Addis  and  Arnold's  Catholic  Dictionary, 
cited,  i,   5,  note ;    125,  note ;   ii,   103, 
note  ;  266,  note  ;  268,  note  ;  285,  note  ; 
316,  note. 
Addison,  his  praise  of  Burnet's  work,  i, 

219. 
Adeline,  cited,  ii,  111,  note. 
Adelung,  his  work  in  comparative  philol- 
ogy, ii,  190,  191. 
Adonis,  transformation  of,  ii,  219. 
Adrian  VI,   Pope,  his  bull  against  sor- 
cery, i,  385. 
Adrichom,    Christian,   on    the  statue    of 
Lot's   wife,    ii,    236.      Cited,    ii,    237, 
note. 
^Egina,  legend  of  a  rock  in,  ii,  210. 
/Elfric,  Anglo-Saxon   manual  of  astron- 
omy attributed  to,  i,  329,  note. 
/Eolus,  his  relation  to  storms,  i,  323. 
^Eschylus,  cited,  i,  99,  note. 
/Esculapius,  supernatural  announcement 
of  his   birth  and  of  his  death,  i,  172. 
Priests  of,  their  power  over  disease,  ii, 
1.     Cures  wrought  in  his  temples,  23. 
Africa,    presence    of  stone    implements 
among  the  natives  of,  i,  307.     Preva- 
lence of  magic   among   tribes  of,  373. 
Epidemics   of  hysteria    on    the    west 
coast  of,  ii,   163.     Myths  among  the 
negroes  of,  217. 
Agassiz,    Louis,   his    opposition    to   the 
theory  of  evolution,  i,   68,  69.     Inci- 
dent illustrating  his  deep  ethical  and 
religious  feeling,  70,  note.    Annoyance 
of  him  by  theologians,  223.     His  ad- 
mission   that   the    young  of  a    species 
resemble  the  older  forms  of  the  same 
group,  308.     Cited,  70,  note. 
Agatha,   St.,   imprint   of  her  feet  on   a 

stone,  ii,  212. 
Agnus  Dei,  great   power  of  this  fetich 
over  the  elements,  i,  342,  343,  and  note, 
349.     Its    consecration    by   the    Pope, 
343.     Its  effect  on  medical  science,  ii, 
30. 
Agobard,   Archbishop,  his  book   against 
superstitions   regarding  storms,  i,  351. 
His  theory  of  insanity,  ii,  103,  122.    On 
verbal   inspiration   of    Scripture,    301. 
Cited,  i,  351,  note  ;  ii,  303,  note. 
Agricola,   effect   of  mystic   theology  on, 
i,    397.     His    theory    of    gases,     402. 
Cited,  105,  note. 


Agrippa,  Cornelius,  of  Nettesheim,  his 
attempt  to  mitigate  the  witch  supersti- 
tion, i,  354,  355,  391 ;  ii,  119.  Cited, 
i,  399,  note. 

d'Aguesseau,  on  the  suppression  of  sor- 
cery, ii,  123. 

Aids  to  Faith,  cited,  ii,  348,  note. 

d'Ailly,  Cardinal,  his  acceptance  of  the 
literal  account  of  the  creation,  i,  26. 
On  the  antipodes,  107.  His  influence 
on  Columbus,  111,  112.  On  the  rela- 
tion between  Scripture  and  the  geo- 
centric theory,  120.  His  theory  re- 
garding the  rainbow,  330,  and  the 
cause  of  rain,  331.  Cited,  28,  note; 
100,  note  ;  no,  note  ;  112,  note  ;  122, 
note  ;  331,  note. 

Aix,  epidemic  of  diabolic  possession  at, 
ii.  143. 

Alabaster,  cited,  i,  172,  note;  173,  note. 

Alberg,  cited,  i,  62,  note. 

Albert  the  Great  (Albertus  Magnus),  his 
rejection  of  fables  regarding  the  origin 
of  certain  birds,  i,  37.  His  acceptance 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  antipodes,  106. 
His  belief  in  the  sphericity  of  the 
earth,  97.  On  comets,  175,  178.  His 
theory  of  fossils,  212.  His  attempt  to 
reconcile  Aristotle  with  the  views  de- 
rived from  the  fathers,  329,  330.  His 
belief  in  the  diabolical  origin  of  storms, 
337.  His  place  in  the  development  of 
science,  377,  378,  395.  The  teacher 
of  Thomas  Aquinas,  379.  Charge  of 
magic  against,  386.  His  theory  of 
gases,  403.  His  devotion  to  science, 
ii,  35.  Loss  resulting  from  the  theo- 
logical bias  of,  90.  On  the  writings  of 
Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  315.  Cited, 
i,  37,  note  ;  175,  note  ;  330,  note  ;  338, 
note  ;  ii,  316,  note. 

Albert  of  Lowenstein,  Count,  his  faith 
in  miraculous  stories,  ii,  235. 

Albert,  Maurice,  cited,  ii,  3,  note. 

Albinos,  cited,  ii,  53,  note. 

Alby,  Council  of,  its  decree  against  Jew- 
ish physicians,  ii,  44. 

Alchemists,    Pope   John's   bull    against, 

i,  3S4. 

Alchemy,  theological  arguments  for,  i, 
397,  398.  A  step  in  the  evolution  of 
chemistry,  404. 

Alcuin,  encouragement  of  medical  studies 
by,  ii,  34- 

Alexander  the  Great,  supernatural  an- 
nouncement of  his  death,  i,  172. 

Alexander  I,  Pope,  on  the  employment 
of  holy  water  against  devils,  i,  342. 

Alexander  III,  Pope,  his  prohibition  to 
ecclesiastics  of  the  study  of  physics,  i, 
386.     His  decretals  against  the  study 


INDEX. 


399 


of  medicine,  ii,  36.  On  the  taking  of 
interest,  267.  His  decree  against 
usury,  cited,  263,  note. 

Alexander  VI,  Pope,  his  division  of  the 
New  World  between  Spain  and  Port- 
ugal, i,  108. 

Alexander  VII,  Pope,  his  bull  prefixed 
to  the  Index,  i,  158,  163,  164,  165. 

Alexander  III,  Czar,  unavailing  inter- 
cession of  Father  Ivan  at  the  death- 
bed of,  ii,  23,  note. 

Alexander  of  Trades,  his  study  of  insan- 
ity, ii,  99. 

Alexandria,  translation  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  at,  ii,  289.  Study  of  the 
Scriptures  at,  2^3. 

Alexandria,  school  of,  its  inheritance  of 
Plato's  and  Aristotle's  scientific  meth- 
ods, i,  375.  Development  of  medical 
science  in,  ii,  2,  26. 

Alexian  Brothers,  their  care  for  the  in- 
sane, ii,  105. 

Alexis,  Czar,  revision  of  the  Slavonic 
Scriptures  during  the  reign  of,  ii,  309. 

Alfred  the  Great,  his  decree  against 
money-lenders,  ii,  267.  His  belief  in 
the  oracular  interpretation  of  Scrip- 
ture, 302. 

Algiers,  attempt  of  the  Arab  priests  of,  to 
arouse  fanaticism  against  the  French, 

'i.  155- 
Allegory,  Luther  on  Moses's  use  of,  i,  26. 

Necessity     of,    in    explaining    sacred 

books,   ii,  293.     Use  of,  in  explaining 

the  Scriptures,  293-300. 
Allen,  the    Rev.    Mr.,  his   opposition   to 

vaccination,  ii,  59. 
Allen,  [.  R  ,  cited,  i,  36,  note. 
Allgemeine  Deutsche  Biograpkie,  cited,  i, 

193,  note;  217,  note;  399,  note. 
Alliez,  Abbe,  cited,  i,  371,  note. 
Almamon,  on  intellectual  development, 

ii,  34- 

Almeida,  on  Xavier's  miracles,  ii,  12. 
Cited,  11,  note. 

Aloidao,  Creek  legend  of  their  attempt 
to  scale  heaven,  i,  96  ;   ii,  173. 

Alphonso  the  Wise,  of  Castile,  his  opin- 
ion of  the  order  of  the  heavenly  bod- 
ies, i,  168. 

Amabile,  cited,  i,  154,  note. 

Amazons,  their  position  in  Eusebius's 
chronological  tables,  i,  250. 

Ambrose,  St.,  his  belief  that  light  and 
darkness  are  entities  independent  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  i,  13.  On  the 
literal  acceptance  of  the  Scriptures,  25. 
His  toleration  of  the  belief  in  the 
sphericity  of  the  earth,  97.  His  toler- 
ance toward  those  believing  in  the 
antipodes,  103.     On  the  second  book 


of  Esdras,  m.  On  the  phenomena  of 
storms,  324.  On  the  efficacy  of  rel- 
ics against  disease,  ii,  20.  On  the  ex- 
orcism of  animals,  113.  On  the  tak- 
ing of  interest,  266.     Cited,  i,  5,  note  ; 

13,  note  ;  28,  note  ;  324,  note  ;  ii,  107, 
note  ;  266,  note. 

America,  effect  of  the  discovery  of,  on 
theological  views,  i,  40.  Opposition 
to  Darwinism  in,  71,  72.  Opposi- 
tion to  inoculation  in,  ii,  56,  57. 
Plagues  in,  85.  Relief  in  diabolic  in- 
fluence in,  127.  first  impulse  toward 
humane  treatment  of  the  insane  in, 
130.  Epidemic  of  witchcraft  in,  145- 
154.  Of  hysteria,  163.  Hervas's 
work  in,  191.  The  cleaving  of,  from 
Europe,  191,  201.  Explanatory  myths 
in,  214,  217.  Reception  of  the  revised 
version  of  the  Bible  in,  291. 

American  Lhurch  Review,  cited,  i,  73, 
note. 

American  Oriental  Society,  its  work,  ii, 
203. 

Amiens,  case  of  alleged  diabolic  posses- 
sion in,  ii,  165. 

Ammonite,  fossil,  myth  regarding,  ii, 
215. 

Ammonites,  representation  of  their  ori- 
gin in  Luther's  Bible,  ii,  236. 

Amos,  account  of  the  Head  Sea  by,  ii. 
223.     Cited,  i,  324,  note. 

Amsterdam,  opposition  to  the  erection  of 
a  statue  to  Spinoza  in,  ii,  318. 

Amulets,  demand  for,  ii,  30. 

Anaesthetics,  theological  opposition  to 
the  use  of,  ii,  55-63. 

Analysis,  spectrum,  information  con- 
cerning nebula  obtained  from,  i,  17. 

Anatomy,  theological  opposition  to  study 
of,  ii,  31,  32.  Investigations  in,  al- 
lowed in  German  cities,  46.  Scien- 
tific struggle  for,  49-55. 

Anaximander,  his   ideas   of  evolution,  i, 

14,  52.  Source  of  his  theory,  51. 
Anaximenes,  on  evolution,  i,  14,  52. 
Ancyra,   Synod  of,  on    the   expulsion   of 

possessed  persons  from  the  Church,  ii, 

109. 
Andersen,  Jiirgen,  cited,  ii,  214,  note. 
Anderson,    investigations    of  the    Dead 

Sea  by,  ii,  251,  259. 
Andover,  minister   of,   his   resistance  to 

the  Salem  witch  persecution,  ii,  153. 
Andover  Review,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 
Anfossi,    his    refusal    to   allow   Settele's 

work  on  astronomy  to  be  published,  i, 

156. 
Angelis,    Father    August  in    de,   his  lec- 
tures on  meteorology,  i,    186-188,  350. 

His    theories    regarding    comets,    1:57. 


400 


INDEX. 


His  compromise  between  science  and 
theology,  188.  Cited,  1S8,  note  ;  324, 
note  ;  350,  note. 

Angelo,  Michael.  See  Michael  An- 
gelo. 

Angels,  representation  of,  in  the  Sistine 
frescoes,  i,  II.  Their  agency  in  effect- 
ing the  distribution  01  animals,  45. 
Their  place  in  the  celestial  hierarchy, — 
their  duties,  119. 

Angelus,  the  midday,  occasion  of  its  es- 
tablishment, i,  177,  and  note. 

Anglican  Church  in  America,  change  in 
its  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  ii,  64. 

Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  cited,  i,  177,  note 

Anglo-Saxon  manual  of  astronomy,  cited, 
i,  329,  note. 

Angouleme,  Duchess  d',  sponsor  at  the 
baptism  of  bells,  i,  346. 

Animals,  theological  teachings  regard- 
ing, i,  24-49.  Creation  of,  represented 
in  the  cathedral  at  Ulm,  24.  Luther's 
views  on,  26.  Theological  classifica- 
tion of,  28.  Theories  as  to  noxious,  30. 
Distinction  of  species  among,  30,  31. 
Bochart's  work  on  the  animals  of  the 
Bible,  40.  Difficulties  raised  by  the 
distribution  of,  44,  45,  46,  48.  Poten- 
tial and  actual  creation  of,  55.  De- 
moniacal possession  of,  ii,  113.  Nam- 
ing of,  by  Adam,  195,  196.  Names  of, 
among  the  Egyptians,  196.  Naming 
of,  by  Fohi,  197. 

Annaberg,  destruction  of  workmen  by 
evil  spirits  at,  i,  403. 

Anna  Renata.    See  Maria  Renata. 

Anne,  Queen,  cure  of  king's  evil  by,  ii, 
48. 

Annecy,  Bishop  of,  effect  of  his  visit  on 
the  epidemic  of  hysteria  at  Morzine, 
ii,  162. 

Annua:  Litterce.     See  Littercz  Annua. 

Anselm,  St.,  his  theory  of  insanity,  ii,  104. 
His  proof  of  the  sinfulness  of  taking 
interest,  267. 

Anselm,  Father,  of  the  Minorites,  his  ref- 
erence to  Lot's  wife,  ii,  234.  Cited, 
235,  note. 

Anthony,  St..     See  Antony. 

Anthropology,  and  the  fall  of  man,  i, 
284-302.  Its  proof  of  the  upward 
evolution  of  humanity,  312.  Its  in- 
fluence on  religion,  320—322.  Com- 
parative, its  solution  of  vital  problems, 

ii,  393- 

Antichrist,  railroads  and  telegraphs  her- 
alds of,  ii,  286. 

Antipodes,  theological  theories  regarding, 
i,  102-108. 

Anti-vaccination  Society  of  Boston,  ii,  58. 

Ant-lion,  description  of,  i,  33. 


Antonine  Column  at  Rome,  commemora- 
tion of  Jupiter's  interposition  in  the 
battle  against  the  Quadi  on,  i,  331. 

Antoninus  Martyr,  on  the  Dead  Sea  and 
Lot's  wife,  ii,  228.     Cited,  229,  note. 

Antony,  or  Anthony,  St.,  of  Egypt,  cura- 
tive powers  of,  ii,  40.  Fihhiness  of, 
69.    Effects  of  monastic  life  on,  121. 

Antony,  or  Anthony,  St.,  of  Padua,  vo- 
tive offerings  at  his  shrine,  ii,  42.  Effi- 
cacy of  his  relics,  81. 

Ants,  as  the  emblem  of  heretics,  i,  36. 

Antwerp,  relics  of  St.  Josaphat  at,  ii,  382. 

Aniigita,  cited,  ii,  73,  note. 

Apian,  Peter,  his  attitude  toward  the 
theories  of  Copernicus,  i,  125,  126. 
His  expulsion  from  the  University  of 
Tubingen,  185.  His  observation  of 
comets,  200. 

Apocalypse,  its  teaching  regarding  astron- 
omy, i,  131.  Plague  described  in,  ii, 
68.  References  to  the  Dead  Sea  in, 
223. 

Apollonia,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40. 

Apostles'  Creed,  conception  of  creation 
in,  i,  10.  Its  teachings  regarding  the 
resurrection  of  the  body,  ii,  31,  52. 
Valla  on  the  date  of,  303,  316. 

Apples,  the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  22S,  232,  242, 
248,  249. 

Apple  tree,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Arabic,  ability  of  possessed  persons  to 
speak,  ii,  159,  161.  Its  resemblance 
to  Hebrew,  190.     Antiquity  of,  206. 

Arabs,  their  discoveries  in  science,  i, 
389.  Reasons  for  their  superiority 
over  the  Christians,  397.  Develop- 
ment of  medical  science  by,  ii,  34. 
Their  care  for  the  insane,  105.  Myths 
among,  217.  Their  legend  account- 
ing for  certain  rocks  near  the  Dead 
Sea,  253.  Attempt  to  make  them  re- 
sponsible for  the  story  of  Lot's  wife, 
261. 

Arago,  on  the  effect  of  comets  on  tem- 
perature, i,  205,  206.  Cited,  i,  204, 
note  ;  347,  note. 

Aramaic,  antiquity  of,  ii,  206. 

Ararat,  Mount,  absence  of  many  species  of 
animals  in  the  country  about,  i,  46,  48. 

Arber,  cited,  i,  110,  note. 

Arbor  Day,  happy  effects  of  its  recogni- 
tion in  various  States,  i,  372. 

Arbuthnot,  on  the  sinfulness  of  lightning- 
rods,  i,  366. 

Arcelin,  on  the  prehistoric  implements 
of  Egypt,  i,  298. 

Archaeologists,  ancient  accounts  of  the 
creation  found  by,  i,  20.  Their  dis- 
coveries of  remains  of  the  savage  pe- 
riod in  the  Nile  Valley,  263,  264. 


INDEX. 


401 


Archaeology,  its  evidence  as  to  the  an- 
tiquity of  man  in  Egypt,  i,  2'j2,  2S4. 
Prehistoric,  266-283.  National  Mu- 
seum of,  at  St.  Germain,  Boucher's  col- 
lection of  antiquities  at,  273. 

Archangels,  their  place  in  the  celestial 
hierarchy,  i,  1 19. 

Archeopteryx,  its  presence  in  Europe,  i, 
45.     Discovery  of,  81. 

d'Archiac,  cited,  i,  62,  note  ;  209,  note  ; 
212,  note  ;  228,  note ;  230,  note. 

Archimedes,  his  scientific  work,  i,  375. 

Architects,  list  of  Egyptian  court,  i,  258. 

Architecture  in  early  Egypt,  i,  260. 

Arculf,  Bishop,  on  the  wonders  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  22S.  Cited,  ii,  213, 
note. 

Aretreus,  his  study  of  insanity,  ii,  98. 

Argyll,  Duke  of,  Dr.  Hodge's  condem- 
nation of,  i,  79.  On  evolution,  S2. 
His  acceptance  of  the  proofs  of  man's 
existence  in  the  Quaternary  period, 
282.  His  efforts  to  oppose  the  con- 
clusions of  comparative  ethnology, 
305-507.  Cited  87,  note  ;  281,  note; 
309,  note. 

Ariano,  Bishop  of,  answer  of  the  Holy 
Office  to  his  question  regarding  the 
taking  of  interest,  ii,  2S4. 

Arietus,  on  the  portents  of  the  heavens, 
i,  183. 

Aristarchus,  his  statement  of  the  helio- 
centric theory,  i,  120.  Charged  with 
blasphemy,  121. 

Aristeas,  cited,  ii,  290,  note. 

Aristotle,  his  theory  of  evolution,  i,  14, 
52.  His  work  in  natural  history,  31. 
Disregard  of  his  work  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  32.  His  conception  of  the 
earth's  sphericity,  91,  97.  His  author- 
ity cited  by  theologians  against  Gali- 
leo,  131.  His  attempt  to  explain 
storms,  323.  His  influence  on  the  later 
Middle  Ages,  330.  His  conclusions 
regarding  rainbows,  330.  His  influ- 
ence on  scientific  method,  374.  On 
the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  265.  Cited, 
i,  91,  note  ;  ii,  265,  note. 

Ark,  preservation  of  animals  in  the,  i,  31, 
47.     Its  inadequate  size,  3r,  54. 

Aries,  Council  of,  its  prohibition  of  the 
taking  of  interest,  ii,  266. 

Army,  English,  death  rate  in,  ii,  92. 
German,  death  rate  in,  92. 

Arnold  of  Villanova,  influence  of  mystic 
theology  on,  i,  397,  398.  His  devo- 
tion to  science,  ii,  35. 

Arnold,  Sir  Edwin,  influence  of  hi 
of  Asia,  ii,  383.     Cited,  i,  172,  note. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  his  attack  on  Colenso, 
ii,  353.     His  influence  in  aid  of  bibli- 

54 


cal  criticism,  390,  392.    Cited,  66,  note  ; 

390,  note  ;  391,  note. 
Arnold,  Theodore,  on  fossils,  i,  222. 
Arnold,  Thomas,  his    application   of  the 

critical   method  to  Roman   history,  ii, 

339- 

Arrest,  on  nebular  massi  -.  i.  1- 

Art,  mediaeval,  representation  of  the  Al- 
mighty in,  i,  27.  Of  theological  ideas 
ol  1  lie  marvels  of  nature,  36.  Upward 
tendency  of  mankind  shown  by  history 
of,  310.  Embodiment  of  ideas  of  dem- 
oniacal possession  in  popular,  ii,  CIO, 
in.      In  modern,  112. 

VArtde  Verifier  Us  Dates ;  cited,  i,  252, 
note  ;  257,  note. 

Artaud,  on  the  approval,  in  1744,  of 
Galileo's  dialogue,  i,  157,  note. 

Asa,  cause  of  his  illness,  ii,  2.  Of  his 
death.  37. 

Asafcetida,  employment  of,  to  drive  out 
Satan,  ii,  107. 

Ascoli,  Cecco  d',  persecution  of,  i,  107. 

Ascoli,  Jerome  d',  persecution  of  Roger 
Bacon  by,  i,  389,  390. 

Ascoli,  G.  I.,  his  work  in  philology,  ii,  203. 

Ashes  of  the  Dead  Sea  fruit,  ii,  241). 

Ashley,  cited,  ii,  270,  note  ;  272,  note. 

Ashley  beds,  animal  remains  in,  i,  81. 

Asia,  nations  of,  their  antiquity,  i,  10. 

Asiatic  Society  of  Calcutta,  foundation 
of,  ii,  194. 

Ass  on  which  the  Saviour  rode,  signifi- 
cance of,  ii,  297. 

Asses,  their  mystic  significance  in  Scrip- 
ture, ii,  300. 

Ass-hide,  its  use  in  flogging  breakers  of 
the  Jewish  law,  ii,  292. 

Assisi,  frescoes  at,  i,  13. 

Assize,  Black,  jail  fever  at  Oxford  during, 
ii,  83. 

Assize,  Dorsetshire,  jail  fever  during,  ii, 

84. 

Assurbanipal,  great  library  of,  at  Nine- 
veh, i,  20. 

Assyria,  theories  of  creation  in,  i,  2,  14, 
21,  22,  25,  50.  Of  the  earth's  form, 
89.  Of  the  centre  of  the  earth,  98 
Proofs  of  the  antiquity  of  man  found 
in,  264.  Development  of  belief  in 
magic  in,  373.  Theory  of  insanity  in, 
ii,  100.  Inscriptions  among  the  ruins 
of,  170.  Inscriptions  in,  197.  Signifi- 
cance of  Isaiah's  reference  to,  295. 

Assyriology,  evidence  of  the  antiquity  of 
man  furnished  by,  i,  264.  Results  of 
the  study  of,  5r,  284.  Its  influence 
on  biblical  criticism,  ii,  370-373. 

Astronomische  Unterredung,  attack  on 
the  modern  system  of  astronomy,  i, 
150,  151. 


402 


INDEX. 


Astronomy,  i,  1 14-170.  Its  influence 
on  theological  ideas  of  the  creation, 
17-19.  How  regarded  by  the  early 
Church,  114.  How  developed  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  116,  117.  Treatises  on, 
ascribed  to  Dionysius  the  Areopagite, 
116.  Among  the  early  Egyptians, 
261.  Vincent  of  Beauvais's  investiga- 
tions in,  378.  Made  predictive  by 
Newton's  calculations,  406.  Early 
theories  of,  ii,  169.  Devotion  of  the 
Chaldeans  to  the  study  of,  172. 

Astruc,  his  discovery  of  the  two  narra- 
tives in  Genesis,  ii,  322.  Its  impor- 
tance, 322.  Attempts  to  pour  con- 
tempt on  his  work,  322,  323. 

Athanasian  Creed,  its  condemnation  of 
those  who  confound  the  persons  of  the 
Trinity,  i,  11. 

Athanasius,  St.,  his  theory  of  the  crea- 
tion, i,  6.  His  influence  on  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity,  rig.  On  St.  An- 
thony's sanctity,  ii,  69.  On  Origen, 
298.     Cited,  i,  6,  note ;  ii,  71,  note. 

Atheism,  charge  of,  against  physicians, 
ii,  104. 

Atheist,  use  of  the  epithet  by  theologi- 
ans,!, 17,  135. 

Athenians,  charge  of  poisoning  against 
the  enemies  of  the,  ii,  89. 

Athens,  plague  at,  ii,  67. 

Atkinson,  B.,  his  attempt  to  prove  He- 
brew the  primitive  tongue,  ii,  202. 

Atlantic  Monthly,  cited,  i,  70,  note. 

Atlas,  King,  transformation  of,  ii,  233. 

Atreus,  his  death  announced  by  darkness 
over  the  earth,  i,  172. 

Attention,  expectant,  a  cause  of  hysteria, 
ii,  166. 

Atterbury,  his  part  in  the  controversy 
over  the  Letters  of  Phalaris,  ii,  337, 
338. 

Attis,  metamorphosis  of,  ii,  219. 

Auber,  cited,  i,  399,  note. 

Audiat,  cited,  i,  226,  note. 

Augustine,  St.,  his  views  on  the  crea- 
tion, i,  3,  5,  6,  25,  30,  210,  2i r.  On 
the  powers  of  numbers,  7.  On  the 
authority  of  the  Scriptures,  25,  325;  ii, 
307.  On  Adam's  curse,  i,  28,  43.  On 
superfluous  animals,  30.  On  the  fu- 
tility of  studying  nature,  32.  On 
spontaneous  generation,  42.  On  the 
distribution  of  animals,  45,  46.  On 
evolution,  53.  On  the  sphericity  of  the 
earth,  97.  On  the  theory  of  the  an- 
tipodes, 103,  104,  109,  250.  Result  of 
his  efforts  to  combat  scientific  thought, 
109.  On  astronomical  knowledge, 
114,  209.  His  view  regarding  fossils, 
225.     On  the  antiquity  of   the  earth, 


250.  His  belief  that  the  air  is  full  of 
devils,  337.  His  testimony  regarding 
miracles,  ii,  23.  On  the  efficacy  of 
relics,  26.     On  the  cause  of  diseases, 

27.  His  denunciation  of  anatomists, 
31,  50.  On  the  original  language  of 
the  race,  175.  Citation  of,  by  Whit- 
taker,  181.  His  allegorical  interpreta- 
tion of  Scripture,  294,  298,  299,  301. 
Cited,   i,    5,    note  ;   6,  note  ;  8,  note  ; 

28,  note  ;  31,  note  ;  54,  note  ;  105, 
note;  115,  note;  210,  note;  252, 
note;  325,  note;  337,  note;  ii,  11, 
note  ;  24,  note  ;  28,  note  ;  98,  note  ; 
176,  note  ;  266,  note  ;  300,  note. 

Augustus,  supernatural  announcement  of 
his  birth,  i,  173. 

Aurelian,  Father,  his  trial  for  accusing  a 
woman  of  witchcraft,  ii,  128. 

Aurignac,  remains  of  man  found  in  the 
Grotto  of,  i,  273. 

Austin,  Godwin,  his  memoir  on  the  re- 
mains in  Kent's  Cavern,  i,  271. 

Australia,  peculiar  animals  of,  i,  45,  48. 
Darwin's  work  in,  66.  Opposition  to 
Darwinism  in,  72.  Prevalence  of 
magic  among  tribes  of,  373.  Progress 
of  the  science  of  philology  in,  ii,  202. 
Myths  among  the  natives  of,  217.  Re- 
ception of  the  revised  version  of  the 
Bible  in,  291. 

Australians,  absence  of  pottery  and  spin- 
ning among,  i,  306. 

Austria,  epidemics  in,  ii,  87. 

Austria,  Emperor  of,  his  hostility  to  sci- 
entific study,  i,  408. 

Authority,  power  of,  during  the  Middle 
Ages,  i,  32. 

Authority  of  Scripture,  meaning  of,  ii, 
308. 

Ave  Maria,  its  power  over  demons,  i, 

353- 
Avernus,    explanation    of  crater   of,    ii, 

214. 
Averroes,  his  activity  in  scientific  work, 

i,  389. 

Averroism,  charge  of,  against  physicians, 
ii,  38. 

Avicenna,  his  geological  theories,  i,  212. 
Influence  of,  ii,  34. 

Avignon,  Councils  of,  their  decree  against 
Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 

Azores,  Pope  Alexander's  line  of  demar- 
cation reckoned  from  the,  i,  108. 

Baas,  cited,  ii,  3,  note  ;  35,  note  ;  36, 
note  ;  40,  note  ;  45,  note  ;  50,  note  ; 
74,  note  ;  84,  note  ;  104,  note. 

Babel,  Chaldean  and  Hebrew  legends  of, 
i,  96.  From  Babel  to  comparative  phi- 
lology,   ii,    168-208.     Legend    of  the 


INDEX. 


403 


Tower  of,  170-172.  Willett  on,  183. 
Influence  of  the  story  of,  191,  204. 

Babylon,  held  to  be  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  i,  98.  Great  ruined  tower  of,  ii, 
170. 

Babylonia,  ideas  of  the  creation  in,  i,  2, 
20,  25.  Theory  of  evolution  found  in, 
14,  51.  Proofs  of  the  antiquity  of  man 
found  in,  264.  Development  of  belief 
in  magic  in,  373. 

Bacchus,  his  position  in  Eusebius's  chro- 
nological tables,  i,  250. 

Bachiene,  his  belief  in  the  existence  of 
Lot's  wife's  statue,  ii,  245.  Change  of 
view  in  a  German  translation  of,  245. 
Cited,  245,  note. 

Bacon,  B.  W.,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  370.  Cited,  i,  287,  note  ;  ii, 
313,  note  ;  391,  note. 

Bacon,  Francis,  on  the  ringing  of  bells 
against  storms,  i,  349,  365.  His  fame, 
386.  On  the  danger  arising  from  a 
mixture  of  science  and  religion,  400, 
401.  Influence  of  the  theological  meth- 
od on,  401,  402.  On  the  jail  fever,  ii, 
84.  Influence  of  his  philosophy,  239, 
242,  256.  His  defence  of  the  taking 
of  interest,  275.  Cited,  i,  349,  note  ; 
401,  note  ;  402,  note. 

Bacon,  Roger,  theological  opposition  to, 
i,  57.  His  measurements  of  the  earth, 
no.  His  opposition  to  the  theory  of 
"  The  Fall,"  288.  His  use  of  the  ex- 
perimental method  of  scientific  study, 
379.  3S1,  336,  387.  Persecution  of, 
387-389,  391.  Charge  of  magic  made 
against,  388.  Cause  of  his  persecu- 
tion, 389,  390.  Loss  to  the  world 
from  his  persecution,  390  ;  ii,  90.  His 
devotion  to  science,  35.  Charge  of 
sorcery  against,  38.  Cited,  i,  392, 
note. 

Bacteriology,  effect  of  discoveries  in,  on 
belief  in  miracles,  ii,  65. 

Badages,  Xavier's  alleged  miracle  among 
the,  ii,  18,  19. 

Baedeker,  cited,  ii,  30,  note. 

Bagehot,  scientific  work  of,  i,  63. 

Baierus,  cited,  ii,  223,  note. 

Balaam,  story  of,  ii,  208. 

Balaam's  ass,  identification  of  the  spot 
where  it  spoke,  i,  3S  ;  ii,  240.  De- 
scription of,  in  Bochart's  work  on  the 
animals  of  Holy  Scripture,  i,  40. 

Baldness,  mediaeval  cure  for,  ii,  39. 

Baldwin,  King,  his  visit  to  the  Dead  Sea, 
ii,  229. 

Bale,  Bishop,  on  the  divine  use  of  me- 
teorological phenomena,  i,  333.  Cited, 
333,  note. 

Balmes,  cited,  i,  170,  note. 


Bamberg,  Synod  of,  its  decree  against 
Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44.  Bishop  of, 
his  persecution  of  witches,  75. 

Bampton  Lectures,  their  influence  at 
Oxford,  ii,  357,  358. 

Bankers,  attempt  to  exclude  them  from 
communion  in  Holland,  ii,  276. 

Banks,  Sir  Joseph,  his  invitation  to 
Priestley  to  accompany  the  Cook  sci- 
entific expedition,  i,  149. 

Banks,  sinfulness  of,  ii,  264. 

Baptism  of  bells,  i,  344-348. 

Baptistery  at  Florence,  frescoes  in,  i,  13. 

Barbara,  St.,  as  a  protectress  against 
storms,  i,  344. 

Barberini,  Cardinal,  his  attitude  toward 
Galileo,  i,  138. 

Barbier,  cited,  ii,  57,  note. 

Barcelona,  establishment  of  the  bank  of, 
ii,  280. 

Baring-Gould,  cited,  i,  172,  note  ;  ii,  166, 
note  ;  223,  note. 

Barkly,  Sir  H.,  dedication  of  Atkinson's 
treatise  to,  ii,  203. 

Barlaam  and  Josaphat,  the  story  of,  ii, 
381,  382. 

Barnabas,  St.,  relics  of,  at  monastery  of 
Lerins,  i,  370. 

Baron,  cited,  ii,  58,  note  ;  61,  note. 

Baronius,  Cardinal,  his  aphorism  regard- 
ing the  Bible,  i,  158.  Cited,  345, 
note. 

Barreto,  his  account  of  Xavier's  miracles, 
ii,  12. 

Barrillon,  imprisonment  of,  i,  391. 

Barthelemi,  Abbe,  cited,  ii,  167,  note. 

Bartholmess,  cited,  i,  130,  note. 

Bartholomew,  Friar,  his  application  of 
the  theological  method  to  science,  i, 
34.  His  influence,  35.  His  defer- 
ence to  Aristotle's  views  regarding  nat- 
ural phenomena,  330.    Cited,  36,  note. 

Bartimeus,  significance  of  his  throwing 
off  his  coat,  ii,  297. 

Bartlett,  cited,  ii,  295,  note. 

Bartoli,  cited,  ii,  21,  note. 

Bartolo,  Canon,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  363. 

Bartsch,  K.,  cited,  ii,  213,  note  ;  215, 
note  ;  218,  note  ;  228,  note. 

Bascome,  cited,  ii,  81,  note  ;  84,  note. 

Basel,  power  over  demons  possessed  by  a 
bell  at,  i,  345. 

Basil,  St.,  his  theories  of  the  creation,  i, 
6,  30,  32,  33.  On  evolution,  52.  On 
the  unimportance  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge, 92.  On  the  possibility  of  salva- 
tion for  those  believing  in  the  an- 
tipodes, 103.  Result  of  his  efforts  to 
deaden  scientific  thought,  109.  His 
condemnation  of  usury,  ii,  266.    Cited, 


404 


INDEX. 


i,  54,  note  ;  92,  note  ;  ii,  104,  note  ; 
266,  note. 

Basilisk,  fabulous  accounts  of,  i,  33,  38. 
Scepticism  regarding,  39. 

Bates,  his  scientific  activity,  i,  70. 

Batterson,  J.  G.,  cited,  i,  265,  note. 

Baucis,  story  of,  ii,  214,  219. 

Baudrillart,  cited,  i,  179,  note. 

Bauer,  G.  L.,  cited,  ii,  181,  note  ;  182, 
note. 

Baumeister,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Bavaria,  execution  of  Jews  in,  ii,  73. 

Bavarian  Government,  its  refusal  to  allow 
the  representation  of  Satan  in  the 
Ober-Ammergau  Passion  Play  ii,  128. 

Baxter,  Richard,  witch  persecution  en- 
couraged by,  i,  361.  His  approval  of 
Mather's  book  on  witchcraft,  ii,  146. 

de  Baye,  cited,  i,  294,  note. 

Bayeux  tapestry,  its  preservation  of  be- 
lief regarding  comets,  i,  177,  and  note  ; 
204. 

Bayle,  Pierre,  his  attack  on  the  cometary 
superstitions,  199,  200.  His  influence 
against  belief  in  witchcraft,  362.  Cited, 
200,  note  ;  ii,  321,  noie. 

Bayle's  Dictionary,  cited,  ii,  332,  note. 

Baylee,  Rev.  Dr.,  on  the  philological 
confirmation  of  the  story  of  the  Tower 
of  Babel,  ii,  205.  On  the  inerrancy  of 
Scripture,  368.     Cited,  207,  note. 

Bayma,  his  condemnation  of  Darwin,  i, 
72.     Cited,  73,  note. 

Bazin,  cited,  ii,  145,  note. 

Beagle,  scientific  expedition  of  the,  i, 
66. 

Beale,  cited,  i,  392,  note. 

Bear,  the  cave,  remains  of,  found  in 
caverns,  i,  270,  271,  276,  277.  Carv- 
ings representing,  274. 

Bears,  distribution  of,  over  the  earth,  i, 

47; 

Bear's  grease,  its  medicinal  properties,  ii, 

39- 
Beard,  Charles,  cited,  i,  87,  note;  ii,  309, 

note  ;  316,  note  ;  332,  note  ;  333,  note  ; 

341,  note. 
Beasts,  clean  and  unclean,  their  creation, 

i,  27.    A  pocalyptic,  their  representation 

in  mediaeval  art,  36. 
Beattie,  James,  on   the    new   system  of 

philology,  ii,    197,    198.      Cited,   200, 

note. 
Beaugrand,  Father  Felix,  on  the  Dead 

Sea    legends,    ii,    243.       Cited,    243, 

note.. 
Beaumont,  Elie  de,  his  opposition  to  the 

theory  of  man's  great  antiquity,  i,  269, 

272. 
Beauvais,    Bishop    of,    his    exorcism    of 

devils,  ii,  109. 


Beauvau,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Becavin,  cited,  ii,  98,  note. 

Beccaria,  his  influence  against  belief  in 
witchcraft,  i,  362,  394.  His  introduc- 
tion of  the  lightning-rod  into  Italy, 
367.  Condemnation  by  the  Church  of 
his  book  on  punishments,  ii,  78.  His 
place  in  history,  134 

Becher,  theological  argument  against  his 
efforts,  i,  398,  399. 

Beck,  cited,  i,  346,  note. 

Becket,  Thomas  a,  miracles  of,  ii,  23. 

Becket,  cited,  ii,  49,  note. 

Becon,  his  objection  to  the  ringing  of 
bells  against  storms,  i,  348,  note. 

Be'darride,  cited,  ii,  34,  note  ;  45,  note  : 
270,  note  ;  271,  note. 

Bede,  his  views  of  the  creation,  i,  3,  9. 
On  the  number  two,  7.  On  harmless 
and  harmful  animals,  28.  On  Noah's 
ark,  54.  His  belief  in  the  sphericity 
of  the  earth,  97.  On  comets,  175.  In- 
fluence of  St.  Augustine  on,  211.  His 
sacred  chronology,  251.  His  cosmog- 
raphy, 326,  327.  His  theory  that  the 
firmament  is  made  of  ice,  328.  His 
belief  in  the  diabolical  origin  of  storms, 

337.  His  views  on  science,  376.  His 
accounts  of  miracles,  ii,  23.  His  ac- 
count of  the  wonders  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  228.  His  exegesis  of  Scripture, 
302.  Cited,  i,  28,  note  ;  31,  note  ;  56, 
note  ;  175,  note  ;  211,  note  ;  327,  note  ; 

338,  note  ;  ii,  25,  note  ;  229,  note. 
Bede,   Pseudo-,  on    the   sources   of  the 

waters  above  the  heavens,  i,  327.  On 
the  cause  of  earthquakes  and  tides, 
327.  On  the  theological  explanation 
of  phenomena,  328. 

Bedlam,  origin  of  the  word,  ii,  1 12.  Treat- 
ment of  the  insane  in  the  hospital  of, 
133- 

Beeches,  found  in  the  peat-beds  of  Den- 
mark, i,  293. 

Bees,  how  generated,  i,  55. 

Beetles,  how  generated,  i,  55. 

Behrends,  cited,  ii,  287,  note. 

Bekker,  Balthasar,  his  opposition  to  the 
theological  view  of  comets,  i,  198.  On 
witchcraft,  359  ;  ii,  123.  Punishment 
of,  i,  362,  391  ;  ii,  119,  123.  Cited,  i, 
199,  note. 

Bel,  the  Deluge  ascribed  to  his  caprice,  i, 
238. 

Belgrade,  legend  of  the  boulders  near,  ii, 
217. 

Bell,  Sir  Charles,  his  essay  in  the  Bridge- 
water  series,  i,  43.     Cited,  172,  note. 

Bellarmin,  Cardinal,  his  attack  on  Gali- 
leo, i,  134,  137,  163,  218.  On  the 
baptism  of  bells,  347.     His  ineffectual 


INDEX. 


405 


opposition  to  the  belief  in  the  inspi- 
ration of  the  Vulgate  translation,  ii, 
3o3. 

Bell-ringers,  frequent  death  from  light- 
ning of,  i,  367. 

Bells,  consecrated,  a  protection  against 
storms  and  demons,  i,  344-350,  368. 
(  harlemagne's  prohibition  against  bap- 
tizing, 344.  Consecration  of,  345-347, 
and  note.  Bacon's  explanation  of  their 
efficacy,  349,  365.  On  the  high  priest's 
robe,  their  signification,  ii,  294,  295. 

Belon,  Pierre,  his  attitude  toward  the 
myths  of  Palestine,  ii,  238.  Cited, 
241,  note. 

Belzunce,  Bishop,  his  conduct  during 
the  plague  at  Marseilles,  ii,  86. 

Benedict  XIV,  Pope,  his  attitude  toward 
the  Copernican  theory,  i,  155.  His  en- 
cyclical relating  to  usury,  ii,  2S2,  284. 
Dedication  of  Maffei's  work  to,  283. 

Benfey,  cited,  ii,  176,  note  ;  181,  note  ; 
182,  note;  192,  note. 

Benjamin  of  Tudela,  Rabbi,  on  the  mi- 
raculous qualities  of  Lot's  wife's  statue, 
ii,  229.     Cited,  231,  note. 

Benson,  Archbishop,  his  attitude  toward 
biblical  criticism,  ii,  359. 

Bentham,  his  work  in  political  economy, 
ii,  283.     Cited,  285,  note. 

Bentley,  on  the  primitive  language  of 
the  race,  ii,  187.  His  controversy  with 
Boyle  over  the  Letters  of  Phalaris, 
337.  338-  Plis  influence  on  biblical 
criticism,  338.  Cited,  188,  note  ;  341, 
note. 

Benton,  Senator,  his  characterization  of 
Secretary  Mason,  ii,  250. 

Berdoe,  Dr.,  on  the  power  of  mind  over 
body,  ii,  25.     Cited,  25,  note. 

Berenger-Feraud.     Cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Berger  de  Xivrey,  on  Pope  Zachary's 
denunciation  of  Virgil  of  Salzburg,  i, 
106,  note.  Cited,  36,  note  ;  106,  note  ; 
227,  note. 

Bering,  his  researches  in  bacteriology, 
ii.  65. 

Beringer,  J.,  his  treatise  on  fossils,  i,  216. 
Cited,  216,  note. 

Berlin,  assembly  of  Lutheran  clergy  at, 
to  protest  against  modern  science,  i, 
150.     Church  attendance  in,  239. 

Bernard,  St.,  on  the  sinfulness  of  using 
medicine,  ii,  28,  36,  37.  Curative  pow- 
ers of,  41.  Excommunication  of  flies 
by,  113.  On  the  taking  of  interest, 
267.  His  condemnation  of  Abelard, 
302.  His  sermons  on  Solomon's  Song, 
326.     Cited,  28,  note  ;  269,  note. 

Bernard,  Dr.  Charles,  unsuccessful  treat- 
ment of  scrofula  by,  ii,  48. 


Bernardino,  St.,  his  enmity  to  the  Jews, 

ii,  74- 

Bernouilli  (or  Bernoulli),  his  develop- 
ment of  Kepler's  cometary  theory,  i. 
202,  203.  Objection  to  his  statement 
regarding  changes  in  the  human  bod) , 
ii,  52. 

Berquin,  the  burning  of,  at  Paris,  ii,  304. 

Bersot,  cited,  ii,  145,  note. 

Berta,  Canon,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  363. 

Bertharius,  his  collection  of  prescrip- 
tions, ii,  35. 

Berti,  his  publication  of  Galileo's  trial, 
i,  131.     Cited,  130,  note. 

Bertrand,  E.,  his  theory  of  fossils,  i,  240. 

Bertrand,  J.,  cited,  i,  123,  note;  125, 
note;  155,  note;  157,  note;  164,  note. 

Besancon,  holy  handkerchief  of,  its  cura- 
tive powers,  ii,  102. 

Bessel,  his  proof  of  the  heliocentric  the- 
ory, i,  157. 

Bestiaries,  lessons  drawn  from,  i,  35. 

Bethlehem,  belief  of  the  people  of,  re- 
garding the  Dead  Sea  fruit,  ii,  248. 

Bethlehem  Hospital  at  London,  care  for 
the  insane  at,  ii,  105.  Its  loathsome 
condition,  129. 

Beugnot,  cited,  ii,  45,  note ;  270,  note. 

Bevan,  A.  A.,  cited,  ii,  374,  note. 

Beyrout,  dismissal  of  professors  from  the 
American  College  at,  i,  84,  129,  16S, 
318. 

Beyschlag,  on  the  Fourth  Gospel,  ii,  386. 

Beza,  on  insanity,  ii,  115.  His  persecu- 
tion of  Caslellio  for  throwing  light  on 
Solomon's  Song,  325.    Cited,  116,  note. 

Beziers,  Council  of,  its  decree  against 
Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 

Bhagavadgttd,  The,  cited,  ii,  73,  note. 

Bianco,  Andrea,  his  maps,  i,  99. 

Bible,  the,  truth  of,  wrongly  conceived, 
i,  22,  48.  Its  real  value,  23.  Effect 
of  scientific  study  on,  ii,  207,  20S. 
Hostility  to  the  revision  of,  291. 
Mystical  interpretation  of,  293.  See 
also  Scripture,  Testament. 

Bible  Myths,  cited,  ii,  173,  note;  384,  note. 

Bibles,  illustrated,  their  preservation  of 
the  materialistic  conceptions  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  i,  3,  27.  Wherein  lies 
the  truth  of  all,  23. 

Bicetre,  Pinel  made  physician  at,  ii,  131. 

Biedermann,  cited,  ii,  40,  note  ;  88,  note. 

Bigandet,  Bishop,  on  the  similarity  be- 
tween the  story  of  Buddha  and  that  of 
Christ,  ii,  3S3.  Cited,  i,  172,  note  ;  ii, 
384,  note. 

Billings,  his  researches  in  bacteriology, 
ii,  65. 

Binlang  stone,  legend  of,  ii,  215. 


406 


INDEX. 


Binsfeld,  Bishop,  on  the  ringing  of  bells 
against  storms,  i,  349.  His  activity 
in  the  torture  of  witches,  355.  On  the 
reality  of  confessions  extracted  by  tor- 
ture, 358.  Cited,  350,  note  ;  352,  note  ; 
358,  note  ;  ii,  75,  note. 

Binz,  cited,  i,  359,  note. 

Biographie  Universe  lie,  cited,  ii,  321,  note. 

Biologists,  results  of  their  work,  i,  49. 

B.ology,  made  predictive  by  Darwin's 
discoveries,  i,  406. 

Birds,  generation  of,  i,  26,  33,  37,  51. 

Birks,  on  evolution,  i,  76.    Cited,  77,  note. 

Bitaud,  treatment  of  his  scientific  trea- 
tises, i,  214. 

Biting,  epidemic  of,  in  nunneries,  ii,  141. 

Bitumen,  found  near  the  Dead  Sea,  ii, 
221.   Legends  regarding,  227,  228.  232. 

Bize,  cavern  of,  human  remains  found  in, 
i,  270. 

Black,  his  discoveries  in  chemistry,  1,405. 

Blackguardism,  employment  of,  to  dis- 
gust Satan's  pride,  ii,  107. 

Black  Penitents,  their  care  for  the  in- 
sane, ii,  105. 

Blackwood's  Magazine, cited,  ii,  293,  note. 

Blaer,  his  book  on  the  use  of  globes, 
i,  150.     Cited,  150,  note. 

Blanqui,  cited,  ii,  283,  note. 

Blaxton,  John,  his  treatise  on  the  taking 
of  interest,  ii,  275.     Cited,  277,  note. 

Bleek,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
328.     Cited,  364,  note. 

Blomfield,  A.,  Bishop  of  Colchester, 
cited,  ii,  394,  note. 

Blood,  mediaeval  medicine  for  the,  ii,  38. 

Bloodroot,  its  medicinal  properties,  ii,  38. 

Blumenbach,  his  investigation  of  fossils, 
i,  230. 

Boccaccio,  cited,  ii,  74,  note. 

Bochart,  S.,  his  book  on  the  animals 
of  Holy  Scripture,  i,  40.  Cited,  40, 
note. 

Bockh,  cited,  ii,  265,  note. 

Bodies,  heavenly,  ancient  belief  that  light 
and  darkness  are  entities  independent 
of,  i,  12. 

Bodin,  Jean,  on  the  Copernican  theory, 
i,  140.  On  the  nature  of  comets,  178, 
179.  His  opposition  to  the  theory  of 
"the  Fall,"  2S8.  On  the  nature  of 
thunder,  354.  His  work  in  support 
of  witchcraft,  355  ;  ii,  122.  Cited,  i, 
179,  note  ;  355,  note. 

Boehme,  Jacob,  his  mysticism,  i,  398. 

Boerhaave,  his  experiments  with  cases  of 
hysteria,  ii,  163,  164.    Cited,  53,  note, 

von  Bohlen,  on  the  story  of  Lot's  wife, 
ii,  257.     Cited,  257,  note. 

Bohm-Bawerk,  cited,  ii,  265,  note  ;  273, 
note  ;  277,  note  ;  282,  note. 


de  Boismont,  cited,  ii,  166,  note. 

de  Bonald,  his  attitude  toward  Galileo, 
i,  147.  His  defence  of  the  Church's 
attitude  toward  Galileo,  166, 167.  His 
attitude  toward  comparative  ethnol- 
ogy. 304.  His  attack  on  the  new  phi- 
lology, ii,  199.     Cited,  200,  note. 

Bonaventura,  St.,  his  belief  in  the  dia- 
bolical origin  of  storms,  i,  337.  His 
hostility  to  Roger  Bacon,  387,  388, 
389.     Cited,  388,  note. 

Bone,  the  resuneclion,  belief  regarding, 
ii,  52- 

Bongars,  cited,  ii,  231,  note. 

Boniface  VIII,  Pope,  his  decretal  against 
separation  of  the  flesh  from  the  bones 
of  the  dead,  ii,  32,  and  note  ;  50. 

Boniface,  St.,  his  denunciation  of  the 
theory  of  the  antipodes,  i,  105.  Re- 
sult of  his  efforts  to  crush  scientific 
thought,  109.     Cited,  106,  note. 

de  Bonnechose,  Cardinal,  his  attack  en 
higher  education  in  France,  i,  409,  410. 

Bonnet,  his  development  of  evolutionary 
theories,  i,  59. 

Book  of  Common  Prayer,  changes  made 
in,  ii,  64. 

Books,  sacred,  conception  of  creation  in, 
i,  13.  Noble  purpose  of,  20.  Early 
printed,  representations  of  the  crea- 
tion in,  24.  Their  value,  ii,  28S.  The 
laws  of  their  development,  288.  Man's 
belief  in  the  perfection  and  uniqueness 
of  his  own  sacred  books,  289,  290. 

Boomerang,  its  use  a  proof  of  the  unas- 
sisted development  of  man,  i,  305. 

Bopp,  Franz,  his  work  in  philology,  ii, 
200,  379. 

Borchard.     See  Burchard. 

Bordone,  his  representation  of  the  be- 
lief in  the  diabolical  origin  of  storms, 
i,  333. 

Borelli,  his  development  of  Kepler's 
cometary  theory,  i,  202.  His  contri- 
butions to  mathematics,  393. 

Bors,  story  of,  ii,  216. 

Borsippa,  Tower  of,  cause  of  its  ruin,  ii, 
172. 

Boscovich,  on  the  theory  of  the  earth's 
motion,  i,  155,  and  note.  His  casu- 
istry, ii,  283. 

Bosizio,  on  the  Deluge,  i,  236.  Cited, 
236,  note. 

Bossuet,  his  views  of  the  creation,  i,  12, 
27,  30.  On  the  Copernican  theory, 
154.  Proof  of  the  worthlessness  of 
his  chronology,  240.  His  belief  in  dia- 
bolic possession,  ii,  124.  In  the  di- 
vine origin  of  the  Hebrew  vowel 
points,  178.  His  opposition  to  all 
heterodoxy,  186.     His    condemnation 


INDEX. 


407 


of  the  taking  of  interest,  278.  His 
suppression  of  Simon's  works,  31c). 
320.  His  interpretation  of  Solomon's 
Song,  326.  Cited,  i,  8,  note  ;  28, 
note;  ii,  124,  note;  279,  note;  321, 
note. 

Boston,  faith  cures  at,  ii,  45.  Cases  of 
diabolic  possession  in,  146. 

Botany,  work  of  Albert  the  Great  in,  i, 
377.     Of  Vincent  of  Beauvais,  378. 

Botta,  P.  E.,  his  discoveries  in  Assyria, 
ii,  370- 

Botta,  V.,  cited,  i,  118,  note. 

Botticher,  cited,  ii,  214,  note  ;  218,  note  ; 
219,  note. 

Bouchard,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Bouchardat,  his  labours  in  hygienic  re- 
search, ii,  93. 

Boucher,  Eather  Jean,  on  the  horrors  of 
the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  237.  Cited,  241, 
note. 

Boue,  his  discovery  of  human  bones  in 
the  alluvial  deposits  of  the  Rhine,  i, 
268,  269. 

Bouhours,  his  life  of  Xavier,  ii,  16-20. 
Cited,  17,  note  ;  21,  note. 

Bouix,  his  defence  of  the  Church's  con- 
demnation of  Galileo,  i,  165. 

Boulak  Museum,  photographs  of  Egyp- 
tian sculpture  published  by,  i,  265, 
note. 

Boulders,  myths  inspired  by,  ii,  210. 

Bounty,  morality  of  the  descendants  of 
the  pirate  ship,  i,  31 1. 

Bourbons,  influence  of  their  restoration 
on  education  in  France,  i,  409.  On 
religion,  ii,  248. 

Bourgeat,  cited,  i,  28,  note  ;  379,  note. 

Bourgeois,  Abbe,  his  discovery  of  flints 
in  the  Tertiary  deposits,  i,  282. 

Bourne,  E.  G.,  cited,  i,  no,  note. 

Bouterwek,  cited,  i,  4,  note. 

Bowring,  his  ridicule  of  the  Anglican 
Church's  attempt  to  fetter  science,  i, 
150,  41 1. 

Boyer,  his  introduction  of  the  use  of  in- 
oculation against  smallpox,  ii,  55. 

Boyle,  Charles,  his  controversy  with 
Bentley  over  the  Letters  of  Phalaris, 

ii,  337,  338- 

Boyle,  Robert,  new  epoch  in  chemistry 
begun  by,  i,  405.  His  attempt  at  com- 
promise regarding  the  cause  of  epi- 
demics, ii,  88,  89.     Cited,  89,  note. 

Boylstou,  his  attempt  to  introduce  the 
treatment  of  inoculation  in  Boston,  ii, 
56,  57- 

Bradstreet,  Justice,  his  resistance  to  the 
Salem  witch  persecution,  ii,  153. 

Brahe,  Tycho,  his  observations  of  the 
comet  of  1577,  i,  1S4,  201. 


Brahlsdorf,  legend  of  a  rock  near,  ii,  216. 

Brahma,  representation  of,  i,  11.  Tree 
blasted  by,  96.  His  agency  in  causing 
confusion  of  tongues,  ii,  172.  Early 
stories  of,  293. 

Brahmanism,  its  influence  on  early  Euro- 
pean religious  ideas,  ii,  379. 

Brahmans,  their  alleged  invention  of 
Sanskrit,  ii,  194.  Myths  among,  210. 
Their  mystic  interpretation  of  the 
Vedas,  293. 

Braid,  J.,  his  discoveries  in  hypnotism, 
ii,  65.     Cited,  166,  note. 

Brain,  influence  of  moon  on,  ii,  38.  Early 
theory  regarding  diseases  of,  98.  l'roof 
that  insanity  is  a  disease  of,  127. 

Bramble,  reason  for  its  creation,  i,  42. 

Bramhall,  Archbishop,  his  views  regard- 
ing comets,  i,  180.    Cited.  180,  note. 

Braun,  cited,  ii,  215,  note. 

Brazil,  work  of  Darwin  in,  i,  66.  Of 
Wallace,  67.  Portuguese  claim  to, 
108.  Civilization  among  the  aborigi- 
nes of,  307. 

Breda,  cure  of  Prince  of  Orange's  soldiers 
at  the  siege  of,  ii,  64. 

Bremen,  Cathedral  of,  bodies  preserved 
in,  ii,  10,  note. 

Breviary  of  the  Roman  Church,  on  the 
evidence  of  St.  Hilarion's  sanctity,  ii, 
69. 

Brewer,  cited,  i,  340,  note. 

Brewster,  contemptuous  characterization 
of,  i,  406.     Cited,  402,  note. 

Breydenbach,  Bernhard  von,  on  the  won- 
ders of  the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  231,  232. 
Cited,  233,  note. 

Bridget,  St.,  hallucinations  of,  ii,  120. 

Bridgewater,  Earl  of,  his  testamentary 
provision  for  certain  treatises  on  God's 
goodness,  i,  43. 

Bridgewater  Treatises,  their  place  in  the 
development  of  sacred  science,  i,  33. 
Their  importance,  43.  Criticism  of, 
44.     Cited,  44,  note. 

Briemle,  Vincent,  his  work  on  Palestine, 
ii,  243.  Condition  in  which  he  found 
the  statue  of  Lot's  wife,  263.  Cited, 
245,  note. 

Briggs,  C.  A.,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  370.  Cited,  313,  note  ;  321, 
note  ;  333,  note. 

Brighton,  Sanitary  Conference  at,  Chad- 
wick's  address  before,  ii,  91. 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  cited,  i,  275,  note  ;  ii,  173, 

note. 
Bristol,  reduction  of  death  rate  in,  ii,  92. 
Last  case  of  diabolic  possession  in,  165. 

British  and  Foreign  Evangelical  Review, 

cited,  i,  77,  note  ;  87,  note. 
British  Association  for  the  Advancement 


408 


INDEX. 


of  Science,  Bishop  Wilberforce's  speech 
before,  i,  70.  Hostility  toward,  224, 
406. 

British  Columbia,  prehistoric  remains 
found  in,  I,  279,  280. 

British  Geological  Society,  President  of 
the,  on  the  fossils  in  tne  coal  measures, 
i,  231. 

British  Museum,  prehistoric  engravings 
in,  i,  275,  note. 

Brittany,  language,  the  primitive  speech, 
ii,  191.  Explanatory  myths  in,  211, 
216.     Imprints  on  stones  in,  212. 

Biixham,  remains  of  man  in  the  caverns 
of,  i,  276. 

Brongniart,  his  work  on  fossil  plants,  i, 
231. 

Bronze  implements,  their  earliest  form 
among  the  lake-dwellers,  i,  295. 

Brooklyn,  hysteria  in,  ii,  163. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  his  account  of  the  Con- 
vocation of  Canterbury,  ii,  35G,  note. 

Brossier,  Martha,  her  hysterical  impos- 
tures, ii,  141,  142. 

Brothers,  The  Two,  the  story  of  Joseph 
drawn  from,  ii,  375. 

Brown,  the  Rev.  Amos,  his  ideas  em- 
bodied in  the  Morrill  bill,  i,  414. 

Brown,  Francis,  his  work  in  biblical  crit- 
icism, ii,  370,  37T,  372.  Cited,  374, 
note. 

Brown,  John,  his  account  of  the  cure  of 
king's  evil  by  Charles  II,  ii,  47. 

Brown,  Dr.  Jukes,  his  discovery  of  flint 
instruments  in  Egypt,  i,  29S. 

Brown,  J.  A.,  cited,  i,  280,  note  ;  281, 
note. 

Brown,  J.  Mellor,  his  denunciation  of 
scientists,  i,  65.  His  denunciation  of 
geologists,  223,  271. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  on  the  Copernican 
theory,  i,  140.  On  the  influence  of 
comets,  181.  Cited,  no,  note;  140, 
note  ;  181,  note. 

Bruce,  cited,  i,  177,  note, 

Brugsch,  date  assigned  by  him  for  the 
reign  of  Mena,  i,  258.  On  the  per- 
fection of  Egyptian  art,  260.  His  op- 
position to  the  idea  of  a  Stone  age 
in  Egypt,  297.  Cited,  264,  note  ;  265, 
note;  309,  note  ;  ii,  3,  note. 

Bruhns,  cited,  i,  126,  note  ;  152,  note. 

Brunei,  Sir  I.,  cited,  ii,  286,  note. 

Bruno,  Giordano,  murder  of,  for  his  work 
in  science,  i,  15.  His  attempt  to  re- 
vive the  current  of  Greek  thought,  57. 
His  martyrdom  at  Rome,  130,  143. 

Bruno,  St.,  intercession  of,  in  behalf  of 
Naples,  ii,  78. 

Brussels,  remains  of  ancient  man  in  the 
museum  at,  i,  276. 


Brux,  human  skulls  discovered  at,  i,  290. 

Bruyn,  Cornelius,  his  representations  of 
the  fossils  of  Palestine,  ii,  246.  Cited, 
248,  note. 

von  Buch,  his  investigation  of  fossils,  i, 
230.  His  theory  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  story  of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  260,  note. 

Buchanan,  Morrill  bill  vetoed  by,  i,  413. 

Buchmann,  cited,  ii,  103,  note. 

Buchner,  cited,  i,  228,  note. 

Buck,  cited,  ii,  95,  note. 

Buckland,  his  essay  in  the  Bridgewater 
Treatises,  i,  43.  His  attempt  to  pre- 
serve the  theological  theory  of  crea- 
tion, 49.  Denunciation  of  him  as  an 
infidel,  223.  On  fossil  evidences  of  the 
Deluge,  231,  232.  On  the  ancient  re- 
mains of  man,  268.  His  discovery 
regarding  the  relics  of  St.  Rosalia,  ii, 
29. 

Buckle,  on  stagnation  of  scientific 
thought,  i,  68.  Light  thrown  by  him 
on  man's  spiritual  evolution,  312. 
Cited,  105,  note  ;  322,  note  ;  ii,  36, 
note  ;  81,  note  ;  88,  note  ;  121,  note. 

Buckley,  cited,  ii,  46,  note. 

Buddeus,  an  authority  on  the  old  theory 
of  philology,  ii,  191. 

Buddha,  supernatural  announcement  of 
his  birth,  i,   171.     Stone  hurled  at,  ii, 

210.  Imprint   of  his   feet  on  stones, 

211.  Canonization  of,  3S1-383.  Strik- 
ing similarity  between  the  story  of  his 
life  and  that  of  Christ,  383. 

Buddhism,  similarity  between  narratives 

and  ideas  of,  and  those  of  the  Bible, 

ii,  379-3S4- 
Buddhists,  myths  among,  ii,  210. 
Bude,  his  attack  on  Erasmus,  ii,  304. 
Buffon,  forced  recantation  of  his  views, 

i,  9,  41,  61,  62.     And  the  Sorbonne, 

215.     On  thunder  stones,  268. 
Bugloss,  its  medicinal  properties,  ii,  39. 
Buisson,  cited,  ii,  332,  note. 
Bullarium  A'omamtm,  cited,  ii,  37,  note. 
Bunsen,  on    the    antiquity  of   Egyptian 

civilization,  i,  262.     The  work  of,  407. 

Cited,  172,  note. 
Bunting,   Prof.,  on    the  wonders  of  the 

Dead  Sea,  ii,  236.     Cited,  237,  note. 
Burchard,  Count,  on  the  wonders  of  the 

Dead   Sea,  ii,   229,  230.     Cited,   231, 

note. 
Burckhardt,    his    investigation     of    the 

Dead  Sea  myths,  ii,  249.     Cited,  271, 

note. 
Burggraeve,  cited,  ii,  53,  note. 
Burgon,  Dean,  on  evolution,  i,  76.     On 

the    inerrancy    of   the    Bible,    ii,   369. 

Cited,  167,  note  ;  348,  note. 
Burnet,   Thomas,  on   the  movement   of 


INDEX. 


409 


the  earth,  i,  149.  His  belief  regarding 
comets,  206.  His  Sacred  Theory  0/ 
the  Earth,  218,  219,  227. 

Burnouf,  his  work  in  philology,  ii,  379. 
Cited,  211,  note  ;  213,  note. 

Burns,  cited,  ii,  96,  note. 

Burr,  E.  F.,  his  attack  on  the  theory  of 
evolution,  i,  80,  81. 

Burr,  G.  L.,  discovery  of  Loos's  book  by, 
i,  356,  note.  Cited,  357,  note  ;  ii,  75. 
note  ;  78,  note. 

Burroughs,  George,  condition  of  Salem 
parish  after  the  pastorate  of,  ii,  I47> 
His  conviction  and  execution  for 
witchcraft,  151. 

Burton,  Henry,  cited,  ii,  84,  note. 

Burton,  J.  11.,  cited,  ii,  236,  note. 

Burton,  Robert,  his  allusion  to  comets, 
i,  181.     Cited,  1S1,  note. 

Busaeus,  Father,  his  attitude  toward  sci- 
ence, i,  133. 

Butler,  Bishop,  criticism  of,  i,  44.  His 
logic  powerless  against  the  scientific 
spirit,  49. 

Butler,  C,  cited,  ii,  308,  note. 

Biittner,  his  Comet  Hour-Book,  i,  185. 
Cited,  185,  note. 

Buxtorf,  John,  the  younger,  on  the 
divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew  vowel 
points,  ii,  178.  On  the  sacred  charac- 
ter of  Hebrew,  185.     Cited,  188,  note. 

Byzantine  Empire,  development  of 
medical  science  in,  ii,  26. 

Caaba,  black  stone  of  the,  at  Mecca,  le- 
gend of,  ii,  217. 

Cabanis,  cited,  ii,  3,  note. 

Caccini,  Father,  his  sermon  against 
mathematicians,  i,  133. 

Caddo,  Michael,  torture  and  execution 
of,  ii,  75. 

Cuedmon,  his  influence,  i,  4. 

Cassar,  Julius,  supernatural  announce- 
ment of  his  death,  i,  173. 

Ccesarius  of  Heisterbach,  his  opinion  re- 
garding the  earth's  centre,  i,  99.  On 
thunder  and  lightning  as  instruments 
of  divine  punishment,  332.  His  story 
of  a  money-lender's  punishment,  ii, 
268.     Cited,  i,  333,  note. 

Coesars,  supernatural  announcement  of 
their  births,  i,  172. 

Caetani,  M.,  his  atlas  of  the  cosmology 
of  Uante,  i,  118,  note. 

Cahier  and  Martin,  cited,  i,  36,  note  ; 
ii,  in,  note. 

Cairo,  museum  of  Egyptian  art  in,  i,  261. 
Imprint  of  Mohammed's  feet  on  stones 
in,  ii,  212. 

Caius,  Dr.,  on  sanitary  precautions,  ii, 
82,  90. 


Cajetan,  on  the  three  languages  of  the 
inscription  on  the  cross,  ii. 

Calculate,  the  origin  of  the  word  a  proof 
of  man's  evolution,  i,  308. 

Calculus,  mediaeval  cures  for,  ii.  42. 

<  alef,  hi-,  influence  against  belief  in 
witchcraft,  i,  362.  His  discussion  of 
the  Salem  witchcraft,  ii,  128,  153. 
Popularity  of  his  book,  154.  Cited, 
152,  note. 

Calendar,  Gregorian,  God's  wrath  against, 
i-  333- 

Calf,  monstrous,  Luther's  interpretation 
of  its  signification,  ii,  307. 

Call  hill,  his  objection  to  the  baptism  of 
bells,  i,  348,  note. 

Calganini,  his  presentation  of  Coperni- 
cus's  theory,  i,  124. 

Calixt,  his  views  regarding  the  waters 
above  the  firmament,  i.  98. 

Calixtus  III,  1'ope,  his  alarm  concerning 
the  comet  of  1456,  i,  177,  and  note  ;  204. 
His  decretal  against  Jewish  physicians, 
ii,  44. 

Calmed,  cited,  ii,  98,  note  ;  99,  note  ;  ic6, 
note  ;  120,  note  ;  121,  note  ;  143,  note  ; 
156,  note. 

Calmet,  on  the  origin  of  species,  i,  47. 
His  theory  of  fossils,  226.  On  dis- 
crepancies of  testimony  regarding  Lot's 
wife's  statue,  ii,  233,  257.  Cited,  i,  172, 
note  ;  226,  note  ;  ii,  257,  note. 

Calovius  (or  Calov),  his  denunciation  of 
the  Copernican  system,  i,  147.  His 
activity  against  witches,  ii,  75.  His 
biblical  interpretations,  307.  Cited, 
182,  note. 

Calthrop,  S.  R.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Calvary,  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i,  100. 

Calves,  golden,  description  of,  among 
the  animals  of  Holy  Scripture,  i,  40. 

Calvin,  his  views  on  the  creation,  i,  8,  26. 
On  the  shape  of  the  earth,  97,  98.  His 
attack  on  Servetus  for  expressing  geo- 
graphical truths,  113.  His  condemna- 
tion of  the  Copernican  theory,  127. 
His  views  on  demoniacal  possession, 
ii,  115,  116.  His  charge  against  Ser- 
vetus, 237.  His  belief  in  the  lawful- 
ness of  taking  interest,  273.  1 1  is  atti- 
tude toward  biblical  criticism,  307. 
1 1  is  persecution  of  Castellio  for  throw- 
ing light  on  Solomon's  Song,  325. 
Cited,  i,  10,  note  ;  28,  note  ;  ii,  277, 
note. 

Cambridge,  hostility  of  its  clergy  to  Dr. 
Priestley,  i,  149.  Prejudice  against 
scientific  study  at,  406.  Recent  prog- 
re-s  of  biblical  research  at,  ii,  359. 

Cambridge  (Mass.),  Agassiz's  museum  at, 
i,  694. 


4io 


INDEX. 


Campanella,  persecution  of  him  for  de- 
fending Galileo,  i,  153. 

Campbell,  J.  F.,  his  discovery  of  pre- 
historic implements  in  Egypt,  i,  299. 

Camp  meetings,  cures  wrought  at,  ii,  24. 
Insanity  and  hysteria  during,  121,  163. 

Campanile  at  Florence,  representation 
of  Eve's  creation  on,  ii,  54. 

Campo  dei  Fiori,  burning  of  Bruno  on 
the,  i,  15. 

Campo  Santo,  representations  of  the 
creation  on  the  walls  of,  i,  3,  note. 
Orcagna's  frescoes  in,  107. 

Cana,  signification  of  the  waterpots  at 
the  marriage  of,  ii,  297. 

Canada,  conduct  of  the  Catholic  clergy 
during  the  ship-fever  epidemic  in,  ii, 
60. 

Canary  Islands,  work  of  Dr.  Chil  y 
Marango  on  the,  i,  85. 

Candlesticks,  the  seven,  their  significance 
in  the  Apocalypse,  i,  250.  Significa- 
tion of  the  golden,  ii,  294. 

Cannstadt,  discovery  of  human  bones  at, 
i,  281,  290. 

Canon  of  Scripture,  study  of  the  forma- 
tion of,  ii,  38S. 

Canon  law,  on  medicine,  ii,  28.  Its 
condemnation  of  usury,  266,  269. 
Cited,  28,  note  ;  32,  note  ;  269,  note. 

Canterbury,  value  of  the  relics  at,  ii,  29. 
Archbishop  of,  his  skill  in  medicine, 
36.  Convocation  of,  attack  on  Essays 
and  Reviews  by,  344,  346,  347.  De- 
nunciation of  inoculation  by  a  rector 
at,  ii,  56. 

Cantu,  cited,  i,  130,  note ;  132,  note ; 
157,  note  ;  226,  note  ;  ii,  78,  note. 

Cape  Comorin,  alleged  miracle  of  Xavier 
at,  ii,  12,  17. 

Cape  Verde,  Darwin's  work  at,  i,  66. 

Cape  Verde  Islands,  Pope  Julius's  line  of 
demarcation  reckoned  from  the,  i,  108. 

Cappella  Palatina  at  Palermo,  repre- 
sentation of  the  creation  in,  i,  3,  note. 

Capellini,  his  discovery  of  human  re- 
mains in  Tertiary  deposits,  i,  282. 

Cappellus  (or  Capellus),  his  attack  on 
the  theory  of  the  divine  origin  of  He- 
brew, ii,  177,  178.  On  the  errors  in 
biblical  manuscripts,  319. 

Capuchins,  their  efforts  to  arouse  a  belief 
in  demoniacal  possession  in  France,  ii, 
141,  142. 

Cardiff,  reduction  of  death  rate  in,  ii,  92. 

Cardiff  giant,  theological  explanations  of, 

ii,  217,  218. 
Carew,  R.,  cited,  ii,  130,  note. 
Carey,  his   studies   in   Sanskrit,  ii,   194, 

379- 
Carlstadt,  on   the  use  of  physic,  ii,  46. 


On  the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch, 
313- 

Carlo  Borromeo,  St.,  miraculous  preser- 
vation of  his  body,  ii,  11,  note. 

Carlyle,  Gavin,  on  evolution,  i,  76.  Cited, 
77,  note. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  Darwin,  i,  83. 

Carmelites,  mortality  among,  during 
plagues,  ii,  70. 

Carnac,  legend  of  the  stones  of,  ii,  216. 

Carpenter,  on  the  surrender  of  theology 
to  science,  i,  234,  235.  Cited,  ii,  121, 
note  ;   140,  note  ;  166,  note. 

Carpzov,  his  activity  against  witches,  i, 
359  ;  ».  75-  His  attack  on  Le  Clerc, 
321. 

Caribbean  Islands,  explanatory  myths 
regarding  the  pitch  lakes  of,  ii,  214. 

Caribbee  tongue,  its  alleged  similarity  to 
Hebrew,  ii,  201. 

Cartailhac,  cited,  i,  269,  note  ;  275,  note  ; 
283,  note  ;  294,  note  ;  302,  note  ;  309, 
note. 

Carthusians,  mortality  among,  during  the 
Black  Death,  ii,  70.  Representation 
of,  as  interceding  for  Naples,  78. 

Ca7-tnlaire  of  the  monastery  of  Lerins, 
cited,  i,  371,  note. 

Carus,  cited,  i,  36,  note  ;  217,  note. 

Casaubon,  Isaac,  cited,  by  Walton,  ii, 
188,  note. 

Casaubon,  Meric,  belief  in  witchcraft 
supported  by,  i,  361.  On  Hebrew  as 
the  source  of  all  languages,  ii,  187. 
Cited,  i,  363,  note  ;  ii,  18S,  note. 

Caspian  Sea,  resemblance  of,  to  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  222. 

Cassini,  his  fear  of  declaring  for  the 
Copernican  theory,  i,  154.  His  at- 
tempt to  develop  a  new  cometary 
theory,  203. 

Castelli,  Galileo's  letter  to,  i,  132,  136, 
159.  Forbidden  to  announce  Galileo's 
discoveries,  133.  His  defence  of  Gali- 
leo, 141.  His  banishment,  143.  His 
views  regarding  the  nature  of  Gali- 
leo's condemnation,  164. 
Castellio,    persecution    of,    for   throwing 

light  on  Solomon's  Song,  ii,  325. 
Cataclysms,  their  inconsiderable  impor- 
tance, i,  279. 
Catalepsy,  epidemic  of,  in  Paris,  ii,  155. 
Catania,  imprint  of  St.  Agatha's  feet  at, 

ii,  212. 
Catechism,  its  influence  on  the  belief  in 

diabolic  activity,  ii,  115. 
Caterpillars,  exorcism  of,  ii,  113. 
Cathedral  sculpture,  its   preservation  of 
mediaeval  theology,  i,  1.     Representa- 
tions of  the  creation  in,  1,  11.     Of  the 
marvels  of  nature,  36. 


INDEX. 


411 


Cathedrals,  mediaeval,  survivals  of  pre- 
historic construction  in,  i,  310.  Re- 
vival of  religious  fervor  shown  in,  377. 
Fear  of  magic  embodied  in  sculpture 
of,  3S3.  Representations  of  Satanic- 
power  in,  ii,  no,  ill.  Growth  of  rev- 
erence for,  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
334- 

Catharine  the  Great,  of  Russia,  her  love 
of  comparative  philology,  ii,  190,  191. 

Catharine  de'  .Medici,  contrast  between 
Napoleon  III  and,  ii,  93,  94. 

Catherine  of  Sienna,  St.,  curative  powers 
of,  ii,  42.     Hallucinations  of,  120. 

Catholic  World,  cited,  i,  86,  note;  122, 
note ;  127,  note  ;  129,  note ;  ii,  6, 
note  ;  16,  note  ;  81,  note. 

Catos,  the,  on  the  taking  of  interest,  ii, 
265. 

Caumont,  Lord  of,  on  the  wonders  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  231,  232. 

Cavendish,  his  discoveries  in  chemistry, 

i,  405- 

Caves,  testimony  of  their  contents  re- 
garding the  antiquity  of  man,  i,  240. 
Reception  of  this  testimony,  271. 

Celandine,   its    medicinal  properties,   ii, 

3?- 

Celich  (Celichius),  Andreas,  his  treatise 
on  comets,  i,  190,  191.  His  denuncia- 
tion of  scientific  observations,  201. 
Cited,  1S2,  note  ;   191,  note. 

Celius  Aurelianus,  his  theory  of  insanity, 
ii,  99,  104. 

Celtic,  as  the  primitive  language,  ii,  191. 

Celtic  peoples,  their  mythology,  ii,  211, 
216. 

Census,  objection  to,  on  theological 
grounds,  ii,  2S6. 

Centre  of  the  earth,  belief  regarding,  i, 
98-100. 

Ceramic  art  in  early  Egypt,  i,  261. 

Cevennes,  epidemic  of  hysteria  among 
the  Huguenots  of,  ii,  145. 

Ceuta,  Bishop  of,  his  opposition  to  Co- 
lumbus, i,  108. 

Ceylon,  imprint  of  Buddha's  feet  on 
stones  in,  ii,  211.  Explanation  of  the 
old  crater  in,  214. 

Chabas,  cited,  i,  373,  note. 

Chadwick,  Edwin,  his  labours  in  behalf 
of  better  salutation,  ii,  91,  92. 

Chaldaic  language,  its  resemblance  to 
Hebrew,  ii,  190. 

Chaldea,  theory  of  disease  in,  ii,  1,  27. 
The  legends  of,  197,  371.  Speculation 
on  numbers  in,  296.  Antiquity  of  the 
civilization  of,  370. 

Chaldean  theories,  their  influence  on 
mediaeval  agronomical  beliefs,  i,  116. 
Of  language,  ii,  170,  172. 


Chaldeans,  ideas  of  creation  among,  i, 
2,  21,  50.     Their   influence   on    other 

peoples,  13,  14,  22.  Their  belief  re- 
garding comets,  174.  Regarding  the 
fall  of  man,  285.  Their  theory  of  the 
origin  of  language,  ii,  169.  Of  the 
diversity  of  tongues,  170.  Their  de- 
votion to  the  study  of  agronomy,  172. 
Their  influence  on  the  Hebrews,  2uS. 

Chaldeo-Babylonian  theory  of  evolution, 
1,  14.  Its  influence  on  Anaximander, 
.  5i- 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  his  essay  in  the 
Bndgewater  series,  i,  43,  44.  On  the 
use  of  anesthetics,  ii,  63.  Cited,  i, 
412,  note. 

Chambers,  F.,  on  evolution,  i,  65,  66. 
Cited,  181,  note. 

Chameleon,  Roger's  observations  on  the, 

i.  39- 

Champion,  cited,  i,  178,  note  ;  200, 
note. 

Champollion,  his  study  of  Egyptian  mon- 
uments, i,  257.     Cited,  90,  note. 

Chandler,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Chaos,  early  belief  regarding,  i,  n,  50. 

Charcot,  his  discoveries  in  hypnotism,  ii, 
65.     His  studies  in  hysteria,  125. 

Charite  Hospital  in  I  erlin,  epidemic  of 
convulsions  in,  ii,  158. 

Charlemagne,  his  prohibition  of  the  bap- 
tism of  bells,  i,  344.  Establishment  of 
cathedral  schools  by,  ii,  33.  Encour- 
agement of  medical  studies  by,  34.  His 
capitulary  on  witch  persecution,  103. 
His  treatment  of  the  insane,  109.  His 
prohibition  of  the  taking  of  interest, 
267. 

Charles  the  Bald,  his  laws  against  usury, 
ii,  279. 

Charles  I,  of  England,  his  execution  ac- 
companied by  an  eclipse,  i,  173.  Cure 
of  king's  evil  by,  ii,  47. 

Charles  II,  cure  of  king's  evil  by,  ii,  46, 

47- 

Charles  V,  of  France,  his  law  against 
chemical  experiments,  391. 

Charles  X,  his  influence  in  behalf  of  or- 
thodoxy, i,  269. 

Charles  V,  of  Germany,  his  abdication 
under  fear  of  a  comet,  i,  176.  His  re- 
lations with  Vesalius,  ii,  51,  52. 

(harms,  demand  for,  ii,  30. 

Charton,  cited,  i,  102,  note  ;  ii,  21 1,  note  ; 
213,  note  ;  231,  note. 

Chartres,  Cathedral  of,  potency  of  its 
relics  against  bad  weather,  i,  344. 
Druid  image  at,  votive  offerings  before 
its  shrine,  ii,  42.  Representation  of 
exorcism  in  windows  of,  no. 

Chateaubriand,  on  the  manner  of  crea- 


412 


INDEX. 


tion,  i,  23  r.  His  writings  on  the  Holy 
Land,  li,  247.  ^Esthetic  reaction  rep- 
resented by,  334.  Cited,  i,  231,  note  ; 
ii,  248,  note. 

Chauliac,  Guy  de,  on  the  mortality  among 
the  Carmelites,  ii,  69.  His  influence 
on  medical  science,  104. 

Chauncey,  President,  his  death  accom- 
panied by  an  eclipse,  i,  173. 

Chautauqua,  Drummond's  lectures  at,  i, 
86. 

Chemistry,  attempt  to  reconcile  the  truths 
of,  with  the  Mosaic  account  of  crea- 
tion, i,  19.  From  magic  to,  373-415. 
Albert  the  Great's  work  in,  377.  Effect 
of  belief  in  magic  upon,  383,  384.  Por- 
ta's  researches  in,  393.  Theological 
opposition  to,  394.  Development  of  a 
mystical  form  of,  397.  Made  predic- 
tive by  Mendeleef's  law,  406.  Modern 
development  of,  404-406. 

Cherubim,  an  order  of  the  first  hierarchy 
of  angels,  i,  119. 

Cherullier,  cited,  ii,  101,  note. 

Chevart,  cited,  ii,  43,  note. 

Cheyne,  T.  K.,  cited,  ii,  332,  note ;  333, 
note  ;  353,  note. 

Chiang  Shui,  destruction  of,  ii,  213. 

Chiaramonti,  his  arguments  against  the 
Copernican  system,  i,  145. 

Chil  y  Marango,  Dr.,  on  the  evidences  of 
evolution  in  the  Canary  Islands,  i, 
85. 

China,  theory  of  disease  in,  ii,  1.  Folk- 
lore of,  197.  Explanatory  myths  in, 
213,  215. 

Chinese,  their  belief  regarding  the  cen- 
tre of  the  earth,  i,  98. 

Chinon,  the  burning  of  Jews  at,  ii,  73. 

Chloroform,  theological  opposition  to  its 
use  in  childbirth,  i,  319  ;  ii,  63. 

Cholera,  ravages  of  the,  ii,  67.  In  Na- 
ples, 80.     Disappearance  of,  94. 

Cholula,  Pyramid  of,  confusion  of  tongues 
at  the  building  of,  i,  96  ;  ii,  173. 

Choyer,  Abbe,  on  the  theological  atti- 
tude toward  science,  i,  236. 

Christ.     See  Jesus. 

Christianity,  influence  of  its  establish- 
ment upon  science,  i,  375,  376.  Its 
inheritance  of  Hebraic  belief  in  magic, 
382.  Its  renewal  of  the  laws  against 
magic,  383.  Its  effect  on  medicine,  ii, 
3,  4.  Power  of  casting  out  devils  an 
alleged  proof  of  its  divine  origin,  101. 
The  great  danger  to,  263. 

Christian,  The,  its  attack  on  the  theory 
of  evolution,  i,  83. 

Christian  Examiner,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Christian  Philosopher,  Mather's,  cited,  i, 
150,  note. 


Christine,  Grand  Duchess,  Galileo's  let- 
ter to,  1,  132,  136,  159. 
Christlieb,  on  Darwinism,  i,  7S. 
Christol,  his  excavations  in  the  cavern  of 

Gard,  i,  270. 
Christopher,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii, 
40. 

Christy,  his  excavations  at  Eyzies,  i,  274. 

Chronicles,  books  of,  Newton's  views  as 
to  their  authorship,  ii,  310.  Cited,  286, 
note. 

Chronology,  old  belief  regarding  biblical, 
i,  8.  Lyell  on,  74.  Sacred,  249-256. 
The  new,  257-265. 

Chrysostom,  St.  John, his  opposition  to  the 
theory  of  the  earth's  sphericity,  i,  92. 
Citation  of,  by  Whittaker,  ii,  181.  By 
Willett,  183.  On  the  naming  of  ani- 
mals by  Adam,  195.  His  theory  of  the 
origin  of  letters,  197.  His  belief  in  the 
permanence  of  Lot's  wife's  statue,  22S, 
262.  His  condemnation  of  usury,  265, 
266.  His  attempt  to  apply  reason  to 
the  interpretation  of  the  Bible,  301. 
Cited,  98,  note  ;  196,  note  ;  228,  note. 

Church,  Dean,  cited,  ii,  341,  note  ;  355, 
note  ;  356,  note. 

Church,  the,  results  of  its  failure  to  ac- 
cept the  truths  of  science,  i,  378.  Two 
great  streams  of  influence  in,  ii,  105. 
Reason  why  it  has  accepted  the  con- 
clusions of  comparative  philology,  189. 

Church,  the  Roman  Catholic,  its  attitude 
toward  evolution,  i,  S2.  The  higher 
criticism  in,  ii,  362-366. 

Church  of  England,  its  attempt  to  fetter 
modern  science,  i,  150.  Its  hostility  to 
geological  truths,  217.  Its  acceptance 
of  the  doctrine  of  king's  touch,  ii,  48. 

Churches,  Reformed,  their  attitude  to- 
ward the  higher  criticism,  ii,  331. 

Church  Journal,  cited,  i,  86,  note. 

Ciampoli,  his  punishment  for  befriend- 
ing Galileo,  i,  143. 

Cicero,  his  belief  in  the  antipodes,  i,  102. 
His  ridicule  of  torture,  ii,  76.  On  the 
taking  of  interest,  265.  Cited,  i,  91, 
note. 

Cinchon,  Countess  of,  use  of  Peruvian 
bark  by,  ii,  62. 

Cinders  in  the  Dead  Sea  fruit,  ii,  249. 

Circle,  mystical  theory  regarding  the,  i, 
396. 

Cirripedia,  Darwin's  book  on  the,  i,  66. 

Cistercian  monks,  their  chief  seat  in 
France  established  at  the  monastery 
of  Lerins,  i,  370. 

Cities  of  the  plain,  explanations  of  their 
destruction,  ii,  257. 

Civilization,  history  of,  its  evidence  as  to 
the  antiquity  of  man  in  Egypt,  i,  262. 


INDEX. 


4'3 


Development  and  decline  of  civiliza- 
tions, 310-312. 
Clairaut,    his    verification    of    the    new 

cometary  theory,  i,  204. 
Clarke,  Adam,  on   the  effect   of  Adam's 
fall,  i,  29.     On  the  results  of  Adam's 
fall,  221.     On  the  biblical  chronology, 
256.    His  efforts  to  save  the  old  theory 
of  philology,  ii,  198,  199.     Cited,  i,  31, 
note  ;  ii,  200,  note. 
Clarke,   bather  R.  F.,  on  the  results  of 
the  modern  critical  study  of  the  Bible, 
ii,  365.     Cited,  365,  note, 
de   Clave,   treatment    of    his    scientific 

treatises,  i,  214. 
Clavius,    Father,    on    the    satellites  _  of 
Jupiter,  i,   132.     On    the    theological 
theory  of  the  heavens,  132,  note. 
Clayton,  Bishop,  his  adherence  to  scien- 
tific method  in  geology,  i,  217.     On 
the  Deluge,  229. 
Cleanliness,  a  sign  of  pride,  ii,  69. 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  St.,  on  the  shape 
of  the  earth,  i,  92,  97.     On  the  second 
book  of  Esdras,  III.     On   the   signifi- 
cation of  the  altar  in  the  Jewish  taber- 
nacle, 11O.     His  views  as.  to  the  an- 
tiquity of  man,  250.      His   theory  of 
gases,  402.      His  allegorical  interpre- 
tion   of  the    Scripture,  ii,    295.     His 
influence,  298.     Cited,  i,  115,  note  ;  ii, 
196,  note  ;  228,  note  ;  290,  note  ;  296, 
note. 
Clement   [I],  Bishop  of  Rome,  on   the 

story  of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  226,  262. 
Clement  III,  Pope,  his  encouragement 

of  medicine,  ii,  36. 
Clement  IV,  Pope,  his  attempt  to  pro- 
tect Bacon,  i,  388,  389. 
Clement  V,  his  condemnation  of  the  tak- 
ing of  interest,  ii,  267,  283. 
Clement  VI,  Pope,  his  protection  of  the 

Jews,  ii,  73. 
Clement  VII,  Pope,  his  attitude  toward 
the  Copernican  theory,  i,    122,  note  ; 
123,  note. 
Clergy,  causes  of  great  mortality  among, 
during  plagues,  ii.  69.     Their  activity 
in  spreading  ideas  of  hygiene,  94,  95. 
Clericus.     See  Le  Clerc. 
Clinton,  Fynes,  cited,  i,  252,  note  ;  257, 

note  ;  332,  note. 
Clocks,   Roger  Bacon's  invention  of,  i, 

337.  ,    r 

Cloth,  bark,  its  manufacture  a  proof  of 

man's  unassisted  development,  i,  305. 
Clowes,  William,  on   the  cures  wrought 

by  Elizabeth,  ii,  46. 
Cobbe,  Frances  Power,  Life  of,  cited,  ii, 

356,  note  ;  367,  note. 
Cobbett,  cited,  ii,  273,  note  ;  277,  note. 


Cocaine,  theological    opposition    to   use 

of,  ii,  61. 
Cocceius,  his  biblical  interpretation-,  ii, 

3«7- 

Cock,  effect  of  its  crowing  on  the  basi- 
lisk, i,  39. 

Cockatrice,  Friar  Bartholomew's  descrip- 
tion of,,  i,  34. 

Cockayne,  cited,  ii,  39,  note  ;   102,  note. 

Cockburn,  Dean,  his  denunciation  of 
geologists,  i,  65,  224,  271. 

Cohn,  his  researches  in  bacteriologv,  ii, 

65- 
Colbert,  his  edict  against  witch  trials,  ii, 

124. 
Cole,  Rev.   Henry,  his  denunciation  of 

geologists,  i,  223. 
Colebrooke,  his  studies  in   Sanskrit,    ii, 

194.  379- 

Coleman,  cited,  ii,  21 1,  note  ;  213,  note  ; 
218,  note. 

Colenso,  Bishop  of  Natal,  his  work  in 
biblical  criticism,  ii,  349,  350.  Perse- 
cution of,  350-356.  Influence  of  his 
work,  357.  Cited,  173,  note;  351, 
note. 

Coleridge,  Father,  on  Xavier's  gift  of 
tongues,  ii,  20.  Cited,  21,  note  ;  41, 
note. 

Coles,  on  evolution,  i,  76. 

College  of  France,  philological  studies 
at,  ii,  200. 

College  of  Medicine  at  Paris,  denuncia- 
tion of,  i,  410. 

Collier,  on  the  cures  wrought  by  the 
king's  touch,  ii,  48. 

Cologne,  the  relics  of  the  Three  Kings  at, 
ii,  29,  43.  Dancing  epidemic  at,  137. 
Imprints  of  the  devil's  claws  at,  212. 

Colonies,  penal,  morality  developed  in, 

i,  311. 

Colosseum,  sacrifice  of  an  ox  in,  ii,  72. 

Colossians,  cited,  i,  120,  note. 

Columbia,  Presbyterian  Seminary  at,  its 
treatment  of  Dr.  Woodrow,  i,  84. 
Establishment  of  a  chair  of  Science 
at,  316. 

Columbus,  effect  of  his  voyages  on  the 
old  theory  of  the  distribution  of  spe- 
cies, i,  45.  His  sailors'  terror  of  hell, 
97.  His  struggle  with  the  theologians, 
1-8.  Influence  of  D'Ailly's  Ymago 
Mundi  on,  112.  Influence  of  the  re- 
ligious spirit  on,  1 13.  Bacon's  remarks 
on  his  voyages,  401.  Influence  of  his 
voyages,  ii,  23S,  271. 

Comets,  change  of  views  regarding,  i, 
171.  Belief  regarding  them,  174-183  ; 
ii,  169.  Three  evils  arising  from  this 
belief,  175,  176.  Effect  of  comets  in 
the    tenth    centuiy,    176.     The    con- 


414 


INDEX. 


quests  of  the  Turks  in  Europe  ac- 
companied by  a  comet,  177.  Opin- 
ions of  the  Scottish  Church  on,  180. 
Theological  efforts  to  crush  the  scien- 
tific view  of,  183-196.  Appearance 
of  scepticism  regarding,  196-202.  Vic- 
tory of  the  scientific  view  regarding, 
202-208.  Passage  of  the  earth  through 
the  tail  of  a,  206.  Effects  of  the  victo- 
ry of  the  scientific  over  the  theological 
theory  of  comets,  207,  208.  Terror 
caused  by  them,  ii,  6S. 

Commerce,  prohibition  of,  with  infidels, 
ii,  285. 

Commons,  House  of,  on  the  law  of  usury, 
ii,  268. 

Comte,  his  law  of  wills  and  causes,  ii, 
169,  170,  290. 

"  Conception  billets,"  use  of  them  as 
protection  against  the  elements,  i, 
342. 

Concina,  cited,  ii,  279,  note. 

Condillac,  on  the  origin  of  language, 
ii,  199. 

Cone,  O.,  cited,  ii,  3S6,  note ;  390,  note. 

Confessions  of  witchcraft,  under  torture, 
i»  352,  353  ;  ii,  76,  77,  118,  119.  How 
obtained  in  Salem,  151,  152. 

Confucius,  his  formulation  of  the  golden 
rule,  ii,  293. 

Congregation  of  the  Index,  its  decree 
against  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's  mo- 
tion, i,  124,  note  ;  138. 

Conservatory  of  Arts  and  Trades  at 
Paris,  foundation  of,  i,  412. 

Constans,  cited,  ii,  163,  note. 

Constantine,  his  law  against  magic,  i, 
383.  Donation  of,  proved  a  fraud,  ii, 
303,316. 

Constantine  Africanus,  charge  of  sorcery 
against,  ii,  38. 

Constantinople,  treatment  of  the  insane 
in,  ii,  132. 

Contemporary  Review,  cited,  i,  252,  note  ; 
ii,  364,  note. 

Contieri,  cited,  ii,  385,  note. 

Conto,  Diego,  on  the  similarity  between 
Buddha  and  St.  Josaphat,  ii,  382. 

Contradictions  in  the  Bible,  light  thrown 
by  the  higher  criticism  on,  ii,  389. 

Contzen,  Adam,  his  demand  for  the  pun- 
ishment of  lenders  at  interest,  ii,  277. 

Convents,  their  influence  on  mental  dis- 
eases, ii,  121,  140,  141,  143,  156.     Epi- 

1  ,  demic  of  Satanic  possession  in  the 
Ursuline  Convent  at  Loudun,  143-145. 
In  a  convent  in  Wurzburg,  156. 

Convulsions,  epidemics  of,  ii,  136,  155— 
158.  163. 

Conybeare,  Dean,  denunciation  of  him 
as  an  infidel,  i,  223. 


Cook,  Captain,  his  expedition  for  scien- 
tific discovery,  i,  149. 

Cope,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  70. 

Copenhagen,  archaeological  museum  at, 
i,  293. 

Copernicus,  results  of  his  work,  i,  15,  49. 
Difficulties  in  his  way,  22.  Recent 
attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  toward, 
82.  His  announcement  of  the  helio- 
centric doctrine,  121.  His  danger  at 
Rome,  122,  note.  His  departurefrom 
Rome,  121.  His  work  on  The  Revolu- 
tions of  the  Heavenly  Bodies,  122. 
Difficulties  regarding  its  publication, 
122,  123,  and  note.  His  death,  123. 
His  epitaph,  124.  His  work  con- 
demned, 124.  Ridicule  of  him  by  Prot- 
estants, 128.  On  the  phases  of  Venus, 
130.  His  works  interdicted,  138.  Un- 
veiling of  his  statue  at  Warsaw,  156. 
His  scepticism  regarding  the  old  view 
of  comets,  178.  New  epoch  of  belief 
brought  in  by,  249,  284.  Effect  of  his 
work  on  Bible  stories,  ii,  208.  Luther's 
argument  against,  305. 

Coprolite,  Bishop  Kenner  on  the,  i,  81. 

Coquelin  and  Guillaumin's  Dictionnaire, 
cited,  ii,  271,  note. 

Coral  reefs,  Darwin's  book  on,  i,  66. 

Corey,  Giles,  his  horrible  death  for  re- 
fusing to  plead  when  charged  with 
witchcraft,  ii,  151. 

Corinthians,  cited,  ii,  28,  note  ;  68,  note. 

Corn,  Indian,  its  cultivation  a  proof  of 
man's  unassisted  development,  i,  305. 

Cornell  University,  grotesques  in  illu- 
minated manuscripts  at,  i,  36,  note. 
Agassiz's  influence  on,  69. 

Comely,  St.,  fate  of  the  soldiers  who 
sought  to  kill,  ii,  216. 

Corpus  Jtiris  Ecclesiastiei  Anglicani, 
cited,  ii,  269,  note  ;  277,  note. 

Correspondance  de  Grimm  et  de  Diderot, 
cited,  ii,  57,  note. 

Cosmas  Indicopleustes,  his  teaching  re- 
garding the  form  of  the  earth,  i,  93-95. 
On  the  antipodes,  104.  Results  of  his 
efforts  to  crush  scientific  thought,  109. 
On  the  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  115.  His  cosmography,  325. 
His  allegorical  interpretations  of  Scrip- 
ture, ii,  294,  296.  Cited,  i,  115,  note  ; 
326,  note. 

Cosmo,  St.,  miracles  of,  ii,  23,  42. 

Councils,  Church,  their  condemnation  of 
the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  266,  278.  Of 
the  Russian  Church,  revision  of  the 
Slavonic   Scriptures  promulgated   by, 

309. 

Cowper,  on  geological  research,  i,  222. 
Cox,    G.    W.,   cited,  i,  171,  note  ;    172, 


INDEX. 


415 


note;  ii,  218,  note;  351,  note;  353, 
note;  355,  note. 

Craik,  cited,  ii,  271,  note  ;  273,  note. 

Crane,  T.  F.,  his  edition  of  Jacques  de 
Vitry's  Exempla  cited,  ii,  41,  note  ;  101, 
note  ;  269,  note. 

Crane,  sacro-scientific  theories  regarding 
the,  i,  42. 

Cranmer,  on  the  appearance  of  a  comet 
in  Germany,  i,  179.     Cited,  179,  note. 

Cranogs,  evidence  of  man's  progress 
furnished  by,  i,  296. 

Creation,  from,  to  evolution,  i,  1-88. 
Representations  of,  in  cathedral  sculp- 
ture, 3,  note.  Chaldean  and  Babylo- 
nian narratives  of,  2.  Hebrew  con- 
ception of,  2.  Early  views  on,  2-7, 
14,  25,  26,  32,  49.  Occult  power  of 
numbers  in,  6,  7.  Date  of,  9.  Per- 
formance of,  in  mediaeval  mysteries, 
13.  Of  light  and  darkness,  13.  The 
two  accounts  of,  in  Genesis,  20,  21. 
Their  origin,  20,  51.  Potential  and 
formal  creations,  55.  Origin  of  the 
sacred  account  of,  ii,  208. 

Creator,  representation  of,  in  mediaeval 
art,  i,  1,  11,  13,  27.  Conception  of, 
in  Genesis,  Job,  and  Proverbs,  2,  10. 
Various  conceptions  of,  5,  10,  49,  50. 
Old  theories  regarding  his  work,  30, 
42.  Differences  of  species  believed  to 
have  been  impressed  by  him  in  the 
beginning,  31. 

Creighton,  cited,  i,  355,  note;  ii,  84, 
note  ;  308,  note. 

Criminals,  higher  morality  of  their  de- 
scendants in  penal  colonies,  i,  311. 
Ointment  made    from  the  bodies  of, 

ii,  39- 

Crishna,  supernatural  announcement  of 
his  birth,  i,  171. 

Critias,  his  theory  of  the  rise  of  man 
from  a  beastlike  state,  i,  286. 

Criticism,  higher,  from  the  divine  oracles 
to  the,  ii,  288-396.  Reconstructive 
force  of,  393-396.  Literary,  its  influ- 
ence on  biblical  research,  337,  33S. 
Historical,  its  influence,  339-341- 

Critics,  biblical,  their  conclusions  regard- 
ing the  creation,  i,  20. 

Crocodile,  Friar  Bartholomew's  descrip- 
tion of  the,  i,  34- 

Crocodiles,  region  of  the  Dead  Sea  said 
to  be  infested  by,  ii,  237. 

Crocq,  Our  Lady  of,  as  a  protectress 
against  storms,  i,  344. 

Croft,  Bishop,  on  the  Deluge,  i,  230. 

Cro  Magnon,  human  bones  found  at,  i, 
290. 

Cromlechs,  evidence  of  man's  progress 
furnished  by,  i,  296. 


Crooker,  cited,  ii,  3S6,  note  ;  390,  note. 

Cross  of  Christ,  its  location,  i,  100. 

Crozier,  B.,  cited,  ii,  173,  note. 

Crucifixion,  legends  regarding,  i,  101, 
note  ;  173. 

Crusades,  their  effect,  i,  312.  Their  in- 
fluence on  the  Dead  Sea  legends,  ii, 
229. 

Cudworth,  his  great  work  on  the  theory 
of  the  universe,  i,  16.  Belief  in  witch- 
craft supported  by,  361.  Cited,  ii, 
101,  note. 

Cumming,  Dr.  John,  on  the  Hebrew 
language,  ii,  202.     Cited,  207,  note. 

Cunningham,  cited,  ii,  269,  note  ;  270, 
note  ;  271,  note  ;  277,  note. 

Cures,  causes  of  alleged  miraculous,  ii, 
24,  25.  Fetich  cures  under  Protes- 
tantism, 45-49.  Explanation  of  mirac- 
ulous, 65. 

Curious  Tracts,  cited,  i,  363,  note. 

Curtiss,  S.  J.,  cited,  ii,  313,  note  ;  321, 
note ;  332,  note. 

Cusa,  Nicholas  of,  his  statement  of  a 
heliocentric  theory,  i,  121.  New  epoch 
of  belief  brought  in  by  him,  249.  His 
relation  to  the  Church,  ii,  314.  PI  is 
criticism  of  the  False  Decretals,  314. 

Cuvier,  his  opposition  to  the  theory  of 
evolution,  i,  63,  64.  His  influence  0:1 
Agassiz,  69.  His  researches  among 
fossils,  230,  231.  His  authority  in- 
voked against  Lyell,  233.  Gladstone's 
authority  in  geology,  245.  On  the 
geological  evidences  of  man's  an- 
tiquity, 268.  Cited,  225,  note ;  228, 
note  ;  386,  note  ;  391,  note  ;  ii,  53,  note. 

Cybele,  wild  orgies  of  the  devotees  of, 
ii,  136. 

Cyprian,  St.,  on  the  significance  of 
Noah's  drunkenness,  ii,  299.  Cited, 
266,  note. 

Cyril,  St.,  on  the  efficacy  of  relics  against 
disease,  ii,  26.  Plis  belief  in  the  per- 
manence of  Lot's  wife's  statue,  22S,  262. 
Cited,  228,  note. 

Dacheux,  cited,  i,  347,  note. 

Demoniacs,  article  in  third  edition  of 
the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  on,  ii, 
164.  See  also  Demoniacal  Posses- 
sion. 

Dagron,  cited,  ii,  99,  note  ;  125,  note  ; 
132,  note  ;  143,  note. 

Dalton,  contemptuous  characterization 
of,  i,  406.     His  work,  407. 

Dalyell,  cited,  ii,  43,  note. 

1  >amascus,  significance  of  Isaiah's  refer- 
ence to,  ii,  295. 

Damhoudcr,  his  activity  against  witches, 
i'.  75- 


416 


INDEX. 


Damian,  St.,  miracles  of,  ii,  23,  42. 

Damnum  emergens,  doctrine  of,  an  eva- 
sion of  the  laws  against  interest,  ii, 
272,  281. 

Dana,  his  authority  cited  by  Gladstone, 

Dancing,  epidemics  of,  ii,  136,  137,  140, 
163. 

Danforth,  Samuel,  on  comets,  i,  194. 
Cited,  195,  note. 

Daniel,  prophecies  of,  Newton's  views 
as  to  their  authorship,  ii,  310.  Pusey's 
insistence  on  their  early  date,  336,  337. 

Daniel,  Abbot,  cited,  i,  101,  note. 

Danish  as  the  primitive  speech,  ii,  184. 

Dannhauer,  on  the  unicorn,  i,  40.  Cited, 
40,  note. 

Dante,  influence  of  his  conception  of  the 
location  of  hell,  i,  96.  His  belief  in 
the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  97.  That 
Jerusalem  is  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
99.  His  theory  of  the  universe,  117- 
119.  His  belief  in  the  diabolical 
origin  of  storms,  337.  Mention  of  St. 
Bonaventura  made  by,  387.  His  por- 
traiture of  money-lenders,  ii,  267.  His 
glorification  of  the  writings  of  Diony- 
sius  the  Areopagite,  315.  Cited,  i,  100, 
note;  118,  note;  338,  note;  ii,  269, 
note. 

Danzius,  Prof.  J.  A.,  on  the  literal  inspi- 
ration of  the  Scripture  text,  ii,  179. 

Daremberg,  cited,  ii,  45,  note  ;  98,  note. 

Darius,  not  "  Darius  the  Mede,"  ii,  373. 

Darkness  held  to  be  an  entity  inde- 
pendent of  the  heavenly  bodies,  i,  12. 

Darmesteter,  J.,  cited,  ii,  379,  note. 

Darwin,  Charles,  on  mistaken  theories 
and  mistaken  observations,  i,  43.  Ac- 
count of  his  great  work,  66-68.  On 
cross-fertilization  in  plants,  69.  His 
burial  in  Westminster  Abbey,  83.  On 
the  resemblance  of  the  young  of  a 
species  to  the  older  forms  of  the  same 
group,  308.  Biology  made  predictive 
by  his  discoveries,  407.  Effect  of  his 
conclusions  on  the  Bible,  ii,  208,  394- 
396.  Life  and  Letters  of,  cited,  i,  73, 
note  ;  77,  note  ;  87,  note. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  his  suggestion  of  an 
evolutionary  doctrine,  i,  62. 

Darwinism,  opinions  of  the  Church  re- 
garding, i,  71-74. 

Dathan,  God's  punishment  of,  i,  334. 

Daubeny,  cited,  i,  411,  note;  ii,  215, 
note. 

Daunou,  cited,  i,  107,  note  ;  no,  note  ; 
155,  note. 

Davenport,  Abraham,  his  action  in  the 
Connecticut  Assembly  during  an 
eclipse,  i,  173. 


David,  punishment  of,  by  plague,  ii,  63. 
And  Goliath,  story  of,  208. 

Davids,  Rhys,  cited,  ii,  384,  note. 

Davidson,  Samuel,  his  work  in  biblical 
criticism,  ii,  360.  Cited,  348,  note ; 
352,  note. 

Davis,  his  attempt  to  prove  Welsh  the 
primitive  speech,  ii,  184. 

Davis,  the  Rev.  Mr.,  cited,  i,  230,  note. 

Davy,  Humphry,  his  cure  of  patients 
through  their  imagination,  ii,  64. 

Dawkins,  Boyd,  cited,  1,  275,  note ;  280, 
note  ;  281,  note  ;  294,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Dawson,  Sir  J.  W.,  his  conditional  ac- 
ceptance of  evolution,  i,  82.  His  table 
showing  the  order  of  creation,  246. 
On  the  transformation  of  Lot's  wife, 
257,  261.  Cited,  ii,  218,  note ;  222, 
note  ;  257,  note  ;  261,  note. 

Dead,  unlawfulness  of  meddling  with  the 
bodies  of  the,  ii,  31.  Egyptian  Book 
of  the,  its  influence  on  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures,   375. 

Dead  Sea,  from  legends  of,  to  compara- 
tive mythology,  ii,  209-263.  Mediaeval 
growth  of  legends  of  the,  221-235.  De- 
scription of  the,  221,  222.  Its  influence 
on  the  inhabitants  of  Palestine,  223. 
Fate  of  the  cities  overwhelmed  by  the, 
235.  Culmination  of  the  legends  of 
the,  and  beginnings  of  a  healthful  criti- 
cism, 236-256.  Arab  legend  regarding, 
253.  Theological  efforts  at  compro- 
mise— triumph  of  the  scientific  view, 
256-263. 

Death,  its  entrance  into  the  world,  i,  285. 

Death,  the  Black,  mortality  during,  ii, 
67,  70,  73.  Its  effect  on  Church  prop- 
erty, 71.     Effects  of  the,  137. 

De  Bonald.     See  Bonald. 

De  Clave.     See  Clave. 

Deborah,  her  position  in  Eusebius's 
chronological  tables,  i,  250. 

Debreyne,  Father,  on  theological  opin- 
ions regarding  the  Deluge,  i,  236. 

Decorative  art  in  early  Egypt,  i,  261. 

Decretals,  pseudo-Isidorian,  triumph  of 
the  critical  method  when  applied  to, 
ii,  314,  315. 

Deems,  the  Rev.  Dr.,  cited,  ii,  38,  note. 

De  Foe,  on  the  great  plague  of  London, 
ii,  83.     Cited,  74,  note. 

De  Geramb.     See  Geramb. 

De  Gubematis,  on  Hindu  jugglery,  ii, 
66,  note ;  167,  note.  His  work  in 
philology,  203. 

De  la  Brocquiere.    See  La  Brocquiere. 

Delafaye,  the   Rev.  Mr.,  on  inoculation, 

»,  55- 
Delambre,  cited,  i,  126,  note  ;  130,  note  ; 
131,  note  ;  204,  note. 


INDEX. 


417 


Delaware,  explorations  in  the  drift  in,  i, 
279. 

Delible,  Leopold,  cited,  ii,  74,  note  ;  271, 
note. 

Delitzsch,  on  the  origin  of  geological  dis- 
turbances, i,  242.  His  work  in  biblical 
criticism,  78  ;  ii,  328.  Cited,  i,  3,  note  ; 
53,  note  ;  ii,  3,  note  ;  173,  note  ;  260. 

Delphi,  temple  at,  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
i,  98. 

Delrio,  on  the  power  of  devils  over  the 
elements,  i,  339,  340,  note.  His  enmity 
against  Loos,  356.  On  the  agency 
of  Satan  in  causing  disease,  ii,  164. 
Cited,  i,  340,  note. 

Deluge,  the  influence  of  the  Chaldean 
legend  of,  on  the  Hebrew  account,  i, 
50.  The  Deluge  and  Ceology,  225- 
239.  Treatment  of,  by  Smith's  Bible 
Dictionary,  234.  Chaldean  accounts  of, 
237,  238.  Higher  form  of  the  Hebrew 
legend,  238.  Proof  of  its  occurrence, 
268.  Noah's  foreknowledge  of,  330. 
Origin  of  sacred  account  of,  ii,  208. 

De  Maistre.     See  M  aistre. 

Demoniacal  I'o-session,  Demoniacs, ii, 97- 
C34.  135—167.     See  also  Possession. 

Demons,  proof  of  their  existence,  i,  35. 
Belief  in  their  activity,  36.  Conception 
of,  among  the  Greeks,  ii,  100,  note. 

De  Morgan,  his  ridicule  of  the  Anglican 
Church's  attempt  to  fetter  science,  i, 
150,411.  Cited,  i,  95,  note  ;  105,  note  ; 
106,  note  ;  125,  note  ;  132,  note  ;  151, 
note  ;  411,  note. 

Denderah,  representation  of  the  creation 
in  the  temple  at,  i,  24. 

Denison,  his  attack  on  Essays  and  Re- 
views, ii,  345,  346.  On  Bishop  Colen- 
so,  350. 

Dennavit,  Abbe,  his  opposition  to  the 
practice  of  loaning  at  interest,  ii,  283. 

Denny,  cited,  ii,  214,  note  :  218,  note. 

Denon,  cited,  i,  90,  note. 

De  Quadros.     See  Quadros. 

De  Saulcy.     See  S.ulcy. 

Des  Brasses,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Descartes,  value  of  his  work,  i,  15,  16. 
His  fear  of  the  Church,  16.  His  abase- 
ment, 57.  Denunciation  of  him  as  an 
atheist,  135.  Relinquishment  of  his 
great  plan  to  write  a  treatise  on  the 
world,  152,  153.  His  views  regarding 
Galileo's  condemnation,  164.  His  op- 
position to  the  theory  of  "  the  Fall," 
288.  On  the  ringing  of  bells  against 
storms,  349.  Influence  of  his  philos- 
ophy, ii,  239.  Cited,  i,  62,  note  ;  349, 
note. 

Descent  of  Man,  Darwin's,  reception  of 
the  book,  i,  74,  75. 

55 


Description  de  Vfigypte,  cited,  i,  90,  note  ; 

265,  note. 
De  Serres.     See  Serres. 

Design  in  nature,  Grew  on,  i,  42. 
Desmazes,  cited,  i,  74,  note;  113,  note. 
Desorges,    Abbe,  on    Darwinism,   i,    73. 

1  lited,  77,  note. 
De  Sourdis.     See  Sourdis. 
Detzel,  cited,  i,  8,  note  ;  12,  note  ;  399, 

note  ;  ii,  297,  note. 
Deucalion,  legend  (if,  ii,  215. 
Deuteronomy,  account  of  the  Dead  Sea 

in,    ii,    223.      Cited,   i,   374,   note;    ii, 

265,  note. 
Deutsch,  E.,  cited,  ii,  309,  note. 
Devadatti,  stone  hurled  by,  ii,  210. 
Devil,  1  he.     See  Satan. 
Devils,  i,  119,  336-372  ;  ii,  97-134,  135- 

167. 
D'Ewes,  cited,  ii,  81,  note. 
Deyro,    John,    on    Xavier's    miraculous 

power,  ii,  12. 
Diabolic  possession.     See   Possession, 

i  >EMONIACAL. 

Diabolism,  from,  to  hysteria,  ii,  135- 
167. 

Dickinson,  on  the  longevity  of  the  patri- 
archs, i,  398. 

Dickinson,  D.  S.,  cited,  ii,  265,  note. 

Dictionary,  Latin,  its  influence  on  a  pos- 
sessed person,  ii,  142.  English  and 
Latin,  the  tracing  back  of  words  to 
Hebrew  roots  in,  180. 

Dictionary  of  the  Bible.  See  Smith's 
Bible  Dictionary. 

Dictionary  of  Religion,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Dictionnaire  des  At/ie'es,  cited,  i,  136, 
note. 

Dictionnaire  des  Sciences  Af/d/cales,  cited, 
ii,  332,  note. 

Didron,  cited,  i,  3,  note  ;  12,  note  ;  13, 
note  ;  25,  note. 

Diefenbach,  cited,  i,  352,  note  ;  ii,  119, 
note  ;  157,  note. 

Diestel,  cited,  ii,  296,  note. 

Dieterich,  Conrad,  on  the  study  of  com- 
ets, i,  184.  His  sermon  on  comets, 
191-193.  His  denunciation  of  sci- 
entific observations,  201.  Cited,  184, 
note  ;  193,  note  ;  348,  note. 

Dieterich,  K.,  on  the  futility  of  geological 
explanations,  i,  237. 

Dilherr,  Prof.,  his  preface  to  Stoltzlin's 
prayer  book,  i,  334. 

Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  treatises  en 
astronomy  ascribed  to,  i,  116.  Triumph 
of  the  critical  method  when  applied  to 
the  alleged  writings  of,  ii,  315,  316. 
Cited,  1,  117,  note. 

Dionysus,  wild  orgies  of  the  devotees  of, 
ii,  136. 


4i8 


INDEX. 


Discipline,  for  persons  possessed  of  the 
devil,  ii,  101-103. 

Discovery,  age  of,  intellectual  atmosphere 
produced  by,  ii,  122.  Its  influence  on 
literary  criticism,  314. 

Disease,  early  and  sacred  theories  of,  ii, 
1-4,  97,  170.  Attribution  of,  to  Sa- 
tanic influence,  27-30.  Mediaeval  cures 
for,  38-45.  Gradual  decline  of  the 
theological  theory  of,  63-66.  Law 
governing  the  relation  between  theol- 
ogy and,  90. 

Dissection,  neglect  of,  by  theological 
naturalists,  i,  33.  Practice  of,  in  ana- 
tomical study,  ii,  2.  Theological  oppo- 
sition to,  31,  32,  51,  52.  Right  of, 
sparingly  granted  in  the  Middle  Ages, 

49.  50,  55- 

Distillation,  theological  analogy  of,  i,  397. 

Divines,  Christian,  their  mystical  inter- 
pretations of  the  Bible,  ii,  293. 

Dixon,  Prof.,  cited,  i,  408,  note. 

Doctors,  mediaeval,  their  denunciation 
of  magic,  i,  384. 

Dodwell,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Doerfel,  his  development  of  Kepler's 
cometary  theory,  i,  202,  203. 

Dogma,  influence  of  biblical  criticism  on, 
ii,  389. 

Dogmatism,  its  influence  on  scientific  in- 
quiry, i,  113. 

Dollinger,  cited,  i,  392,  note  ;  ii,  269, 
note  ;  283,  note  ;  316,  note. 

"  Domine  quo  vadis,"  church  of,  at  Rome, 
ii,  212. 

Dominic,  St.,  his  condemnation  of  sci- 
entific research,  i,  389. 

Dominicans,  use  of  torture  by,  i,  353. 
Their  treatment  of  Albert  the  Great, 
377.  Of  Roger  Bacon,  389.  Interdic- 
tion of,  from  study  of  science,  389. 
Their  rules  against  medicine,  ii,  36. 

Dominions,  an  order  of  the  second  hier- 
archy of  angels,  i,  119. 

de  Dominis,  Archbishop  of  Spalatro,  his 
persecution    for  scientific   heresies,  i, 

143,  391- 
Donation  of  Constantine,  proved  a  fraud, 

ii,  303- 

Donkey,  medicinal  properties  of  its 
breath,  ii,  40. 

Donnelly,  his  reforms  in  the  treatment 
of  insanity,  ii,  134. 

Dorman,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Douay,  College  of,  its  attitude  toward 
the  Copernican  theory,  i,  128.  Discov- 
ery of  the  sun's  spots  placed  under  the 
ban  at,  133.  Rector  of,  on  the  opinion 
of  Galileo,  144. 

Doubdan,  on  the  wonders  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  242.     Cited,  243,  note. 


Douglas,  Dr.,  on  inoculation,  ii,  56. 

Dove,  employment  of,  in  sacred  art,  i,  II. 
Bochart's  description  of,  40.  Its  illus- 
tration of  the  ends  of  Providence,  42. 

Dragons,  St.  Isidore's  accounts  of,  i, 
33.  Bartholomew's  description  of,  34. 
Representation  of,  in  mediaeval  art, 
36.     Classification  of,  38. 

Drake,  cited,  ii,  150,  note. 

Draper,  light  thrown  by  him  on  man's 
spiritual  evolution,  i,  312.  Cited,  19, 
note  ;  no,  note  ;  122,  note  ;  391,  note. 

Drift,  testimony  derived  from  beds  of, 
regarding  the  antiquity  of  man,  i,  240. 

Drift  period,  supposed  absence  of  human 
bones  in  the  remains  of,  i,  277,  278. 

Driver,  Canon,  his  summary  of  the  re- 
sults of  higher  criticism  of  Genesis,  i. 
20,  21.  His  refutation  of  Gladstone's 
attempt  to  reconcile  Genesis  and  sci- 
ence, 246.  Cited,  24,  note  ;  248,  note  ; 
ii,  332,  note  ;  333,  note  ;  374,  note. 

Dromore,  Bishop  of,  his  approval  of  Dr. 
Moseley's  book  against  vaccination,  ii, 
58. 

Droughts,  modern  view  of,  i,  372. 

Droz,  Gustave,  cited,  ii,  4?,  note. 

Drummond,  Archbishop,  on  sacred  chro- 
nology, i,  256. 

Drummond,  H.,  his  application  of  the 
scientific  method  to  the  study  of  re- 
ligion, i,  86.     Cited,  88,  note. 

Drummond,  J.,  cited,  ii,  290,  note  ;  295, 
note. 

Drummond,  R.  B.,  cited,  ii,  308,  note. 

Dublin  Review,  defence  of  the  Churcn's 
attitude  toward  Galileo  in,  i,  166. 
Cited,  54,  note  ;  87,  note  ;  157,  note; 
164,  note  ;  165,  note  ;  167,  note  ;  ii, 
348,  note. 

Du  Camp,  Maxime,  his  account  of  an 
Arabic  myth,  ii,  209,  210,  225.  Cited, 
211,  note. 

Ducane,  Felix,  cited,  i,  77,  note. 

Ducange,  cited,  ii,  268,  note. 

Dudith,  his  letter  on  the  theological 
theory  of  comets,  i,  198.  Cited,  178, 
note  ;   197,  note  ;  199,  note. 

Duffield,  J.  T.,  on  evolution  and  the 
Bible,   i,   79,  80,  81.     Cited,  86,  note. 

Dumas,  Alexandre,  on  the  statue  of  Lot's 
wife,  ii,  258. 

Dumoulin,  his  refutation  of  the  oppo- 
nents of  interest-taking,  ii,  273. 

Duncker,  Max,  on  the  art  of  writing 
among  the  early  Egyptians,  i,  262. 
Cited,  265,  note  ;  ii,  173,  note  ;  211, 
note. 

Duns,  cited,  ii,  61,  note. 

Duns  Scotus,  his  ideas  of  evolution,  i,  15. 
On  the  Redemption,  397.      His  eva- 


INDEX. 


419 


sion  of  the  doctrine  that  the  taking  of  ] 

interest  is  sin,  ii,  267. 
Dunstan,  St.,  miracles  of,  ii,  23. 
Dunster,  Henry,  his  expulsion   from  the 

presidency  of  Harvard  College,  i,  318. 
Dupanloup,  his  attack  on  higher  educa- 
tion   in    France,   i,  409.     Cited,  409, 

note. 
Dupont,  his  explorations  in  the  caves  of 

Belgium,    i,    276.     Cited,    275,    note  ; 

291,  note. 
Durandus,  on  the  ringing  of  consecrated 

bells,  i,  347,  note.     Cited,  347,  note. 
Durgu,  mountain  hurled  by,  ii,  2IO. 
Duruy,  attack  of  theologians  on,  i,  409, 

410. 
Dutch,  as  the  language  of  paradise,  ii, 

190. 
Dwight,  Dr.  B.  W.,  on   scientific  confir- 
mation of  the  Mosaic  accounts,  ii,  205. 

Cited,  207,  note. 
Dziewicki,  M.   H.,  cited,  ii,  109,  note  ; 

124,  note. 

Eadie,  Dr.  John,  on  philological  confir- 
mation of  the  miracle  of  Babel,  ii,  205. 
Cited,  207,  note. 

Eadmer,  his  account  of  St.  Dunstan's 
miracles,  ii,  23.     Cited,  25,  note. 

Eagles,  Giraldus's  account  of,  i,  37. 

Earnest,  J.  A.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Earth,  form  of,  i,  89-98.  Delineation 
of,  98-102.  Inhabitants  of,  102-110. 
Size  of,  110-112.  Character  of  its 
surface,  112,  1 13. 

Earthquakes,  as  signs  of  God's  wrath,  i, 
179.  Theory  as  to  their  cause,  327, 
331.  Effect  of  terror  caused  by  them, 
ii,  68. 

East,  sacred  books  of  the,  effect  of  the 
translation  of,  ii,  377-379. 

Ebers,  cited,  i,  91,  note. 

Eccles,  R.  G.,  cited,  i,  404,  note  ;  ii,  39, 
note  ;  62,  note. 

Ecclesiasticism,  the   great    curse   of,   ii, 

33r- 

Eck,  John,  his  annotated  edition  of  Aris- 
totle's physics,  i,  339.  Cited,  331, 
note  ;  338,  note  ;  339,  note. 

Eclipses,  beliefs  regarding,  i,  172,  173. 

V Ecole  et  la  Science,  cited,  ii,  74,  note. 

Economic  Tracts,  cited,  ii,  277,  note. 

Economy,  discouragement  of,  by  the 
Church's  hostility  to  money-lending, 
ii,  270.  Application  of  scriptural  dec- 
larations to  matters  of  social,  285,  286. 

Eden,  location  of,  i,  100.  The  four 
streams  of,  their  allegorical  significa- 
tion, ii,  294. 

Edinburgh,  lack  of  sanitation  in,  ii,  88. 

Edinburgh    Eeview,    its    opposition    to 


Tuke's  reforms  in  the  treatment  of  the 
insane,  ii,  133.  Cited,  i,  77,  note  ; 
368,  note  ;  ii,  61,  note ;  133,  note  ;. 
348,  note. 

Edmund,  St.,  miracles  of,  ii,  23. 

Education,  effect  on  medicine  of  theo- 
logical influence  over,  ii,  66. 

Edward  the  Confessor,  his  death  thought 
to  be  accompanied  by  a  comet,  i,  176. 
The  first  to  possess  the  king's  touch, 
ii,  46.  Usurers  submitted  to  the  or- 
deal by,  274. 

Edward  VI,  law  against  usury  under,  ii, 
273.  274-_ 

Eels,  exorcism  of,  ii,  113. 

Eguisheim,  human  skulls  discovered  at, 
i,  290. 

Egypt,  theories  of  creation  in,  i,  2.  An- 
tiquity of  its  civiiization,  10.  Obser- 
vations on  the  natural  history  of,  34, 
37.  Source  of  the  evolutionary  idea  in, 
52.  Theories  of  the  form  of  the  earth 
in,  89,  90.  Antiquity  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of,  257.  Early  division  into  or- 
ders in,  259.  Early  existence  of  man 
in,  297.  Development  of  belief  in 
magic  in,  373.  Theory  of  disease  in, 
ii,  1,  27.  Sacredness  of  dead  bodies 
in,  31.  Use  of  saliva  as  a  remedy  in, 
41.  Inscriptions  in,  197.  Speculation 
on  numbers  in,  296. 

Egyptian  language,  its  dissimilarity  to 
Hebrew,  ii,  190. 

Egyptian  temples,  representations  of  the 
creation  in,  i,  24,  25.  Their  preserva- 
tion of  ancient  ideas  regarding  the 
form  of  the  earth,  95,  98. 

Egyptians,  types  of,  sculptured  on  early 
monuments,  i,  259.  Their  theory  of 
the  origin  of  language,  ii,  169.  Names 
of  animals  among,  196. 

Egyptology,  i,  249-264.  Result  of  the 
study  of,  284.  Its  effect  on  biblical 
criticism,  ii,  374-376. 

Ehrenberg,  his  researches  in  bacteriol- 
ogy, ii,  65.     Cited,  222,  note. 

Ehrenberg,  imprints  of  finger  of  Christ 
and  head  of  Satan  on  stones  at,  ii,  212. 

Eichhorn,  on  the  transformation  of  Lot's 
wife,  ii,  256.  His  development  of  the 
"higher  criticism,"  323,  327. 

Eicken,  cited,  i,  91,  note ;  100,  note  ; 
106,  note;  116,  note;  252,  note;  376, 
note;  380,  note;  381,  note;  398, 
note  ;  ii,  229,  note. 

Einsiedeln,  votive  offerings  before  the 
shrine  of  the  Virgin  at,  ii,  42. 

Eirich,  P.,  cited,  i,  86,  note. 

Elbing,  the  people  of,  their  ridicule  of 
Copernicus,  i,  128. 

Elci,    Monsignor,   his   refusal    to    allow 


420 


INDEX. 


Galileo's  discoveries  to  be  announced 
at  the  University  of  Pisa,  i,  133. 

Eleazar,  High  Priest,  translators  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  furnished  by,  ii, 
289. 

Eleazar,  Rabbi,  his  elaboration  of  the 
rules  of  interpretation  of  Scripture,  ii, 
293- 

Electoral  Bible,  cited,  ii,  237,  note. 

Elephant,  creation  of  the,  i,  24.  Barthol- 
omew's description  of,  34.  Its  iden- 
tity with  the  behemoth,  40.  Remains 
of  the,  found  in  caverns,  270,  271. 
Transformation  of,  ii,  215. 

Elias  Levita,  his  attack  on  the  theory  of 
the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew  vowel 
points,  ii,  176. 

Elijah,  identification  of  the  place  where 
he  was  taken  up  in  a  chariot  of  fire,  ii, 
240. 

Eliot,  John,  on  the  fitness  of  Hebrew  to 
be  made  a  universal  language,  ii, 
187. 

Elisha,  miraculous  power  of  his  bones, 
ii,  26. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  cure  of  king's  evil  by, 
ii,  46.  Sanitary  condition  of  her  pal- 
ace, 82.  The  taking  of  inteiest  sanc- 
tioned by,  274. 

Elkanah,  Christ  prefigured  by,  ii,  302. 

Ellicott,  Bishop,  his  courtesy  in  contro- 
versy, ii,  392.  His  lamentation  over 
the  influence  of  scientific  thought,  394, 
note.  Cited,  359,  note  ;  392,  note  ; 
394,  note. 

Elohim,  one  of  the  narratives  in  Genesis 
distinguished  by  the  use  of  the  word, 

ii,  3*9- 

Elohistic  account  of  creation,  i,  51. 

Elvira,  Council  of,  its  condemnation  of 
the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  267. 

Empedocles,  on  evolution,  i,  52. 

Empire,  an  order  of  the  second  hierarchy 
of  angels,  i,  119. 

Empyrean,  the  tenth  heaven,  i,  118. 

Encyclopedia  Britannica,  its  article  on 
Dremoniacs,  ii,  164.  Its  article  on  Phi- 
lology, 192,  193.  Cited,  i,  36,  note  ; 
53,  note  ;  ii,  384,  note. 

Endor,  witch  of,  the  story  of  the,  ii,  208. 

Engihoul,  caverns  at,  their  explorations, 
i,  270. 

Engineering  in  early  Egypt,  i,  260. 

Engis,  caverns  at,  their  explorations,  i, 
270. 

England,  obstacles  to  scientific  study  of 
nature  in,  i,  41,  42.  Opposition  to 
Darwinism  in,  70,  71.  Changes  in  its 
climate  and  form  in  different  geo- 
logical periods,  277,  278,  279.  Theo- 
logical opposition  to  scientific    socie- 


ties in,  394, 411.  Opposition  to  inocula- 
tion in,  ii,  55,  56.  Persecution  of  Jews 
and  witches  in,  82.  Lack  of  sanitary 
precautions  in,  82.  Plagues  in,  82-84. 
Systematic  sanitary  eflort  in,  91-93. 
Death  rate  in,  91,  92.  Struggle  against 
the  theory  of  demoniacal  possession 
in,  125,  126.  Reform  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  insane  in,  132-134.  Dy- 
ing-out of  the  theory  of  diabolic  posses- 
sion iu,  165.  Progress  of  the  science 
of  philology  in,  197-199,  201,  202. 
Rate  of  interest  in,  269.  Law  against 
loaning  at  interest  in,  271,  273.  Ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  higher  criticism 

»n,  333.  334: 

Ennemoser,  cited,  i,  374,  note. 

Ennius,  his  ridicule  of  magicians,  i,  382. 

d'Envieu,  Fabre.    See  Fabre  d'Envieu. 

Ephesians,  cited,  i,  120,  note  ;  340  note. 

Ephrem  Syrus,  his  theory  of  the  crea- 
tion, i,  6.     Of  the  earth's  form,  92. 

Epicurus,  his  opposition  to  the  theory 
of  the  antipodes,  i,  102. 

Epidemics,  theological  view  of,  ii,  67-81. 
Difficulty  of  reconciling  theological 
view  with  the  facts,  89.  Manner  of 
the  spread  of,  89.  Epidemics  of  pos- 
session, 135-157.  In  Erfurt,  136.  In 
Holland,  137.  In  the  lower  Rhine 
region,  137,  138.  In  Italy,  140.  In 
convents  and  nunneries,  140,  141,  156. 
In  Aix,  143.  In  Paris,  155,  156,  157. 
In  Wales,  157.  In  the  Shetland  Isles, 
157.  In  Morzine,  159,  160.  Epidem- 
ics of  hysteria  in  cotton  manufacto- 
ries, 157,  158.  In  Cornwall,  163.  In 
Africa,  163. 

Epilepsy,  cure  of,  by  king's  touch,  ii,  46. 

Epistoliv  Japonica,  etc.,  cited,  ii,  11,  note. 

Erasistratus,  development  of  medical  sci- 
ence by,  ii,  2. 

Erasmus,  on  the  cause  of  plagues  in 
England,  ii,  82.  His  work  in  biblical 
criticism,  303-305,  316.  His  relation 
to  the  Church,  314.     Cited,  308,  note. 

Erastus,  Thomas,  his  letter  regarding 
comets,  i,  198. 

Erfurt,  power  over  demons  possessed  by 
a  bell  in  the  Cathedral  of,  i,  345. 
Execution  of  Jews  in,  ii,  73.  Epidem- 
ic of  jumping  and  dancing  in,  136. 

Erichthonius,  Athene's  surprise  on  learn- 
ing the  birth  of,  ii,  2IO. 

Erigena,  John  Scotus,  his  idea  of  evolu- 
tion, i,  15.  On  the  use  of  reason  in 
interpreting  the  Scriptures,  ii,  301. 
Condemnation  of  his  book,  301.  His 
translation  of  the  writings  of  Dionys- 
ius  the  Areopagite,  315.  Cited,  ii, 
303,  note. 


INDEX. 


421 


Erni,  Heinrich,  his  letter  to  the  clergy  I 
regarding   the  comet    of   1680,   i,  193. 

Ernoul,  his  references  to  the  Dead  Sea, 
ii,  230.     Cited,  231,  note. 

Ersch  and  Gruber's  encyclopaedia,  cited, 

i,  217,  note  ;  ii,  173-  note- 
Escobar,  his  defence  of  the  taking  of  in- 
terest, ii,  280. 

Esdras,  second  book  of,  its  teachings  re- 
garding the  size  of  the  earth,  i,  in, 
112.     Cited,  112,  note. 

Eskimos,  their  rude  bone-carvings,  i, 
275.  Effect  of  habitat  on  their  civ- 
ilization, 307. 

Esneh,  explorations  at,  i,  279. 

Esquirol,  his  reforms  in  the  treatment  of 
insanity,  ii,  132,  166.  Cited,  98,  note  ; 
123,  note  ;   132,  note. 

Essays  and  Reviews,  publication  of,  ii, 
342.     Fierce   attack   on    its    authors, 

342-343.  . 

Ethiopia,  Nider  on  the  ants  of,  1,  30. 

Ethnography,  Comparative,  the  begin- 
ning of  the  science,  i,  267.  Evidence 
of  man's  upward  tendency  furnished 
by,  308. 

Ethnology,  the  "  Fall  of  Man  "  and,  i, 
303-309.  Beginnings  of  the  science 
of,  303.  Results  obtained  from  com- 
parative study  of,  303,  304,  312. 

Etymology,  efforts  to  trace  a  Hebrew,  for 
all  words,  ii,  180. 

Eudoxus,  survival  of  his  opinion  regard- 
ing the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  i,  97. 

Eugene  IV,  Pope,  his  attitude  toward  the 
Copernican  theory,  i,  123,  note.  His 
bulls  against  witches,  351,  385.  His 
decretal  against  Jewish  physicians,  ii, 

44- 

Eugubinus,  A.,  on  the  creative  energy  of 
light,  i,  56. 

Eugubinus,  J.  G.,  his  oration  before  the 
Council  of  Trent,  ii,  13,  14.  Cited, 
14,  note. 

Eunomius,  Gregory  of  Nyssa's  contro- 
versy with,  ii,  175. 

Euphrates,  early  civilization  on  the  banks 
of,  i,  51.  Allegorical  signification  of, 
ii,  294. 

Euphraxia,  St.,  sanctity  of,  ii,  69. 

Europe,  cleaving  of  America  from,  ii, 
191,  201.     Legends  of  northern,  211. 

Eusebius,  his  efforts  to  fix  the  date  of 
creation,  i,  9.  On  the  uselessness  of 
scientific  study,  91.  Result  of  his  at- 
tempt to  deaden  scientific  thought,  109. 
His  views  on  the  antiquity  of  man, 
250.  On  divine  interposition  during 
the  battle  against  the  Quadi,  332.  His 
condemnation  of  scientific  study,  375, 
395.     On  the  naming  of  the  animals 


by  Eusebius,  ii,  195.  Cited,  i,  92, 
note  ;  252,  note  ;  376,  note  ;  ii,  98, 
note  ;  196,  note. 

Eutropius,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii, 
40. 

Evangelical  Alliance,  Christlieb's  address 
before,  i,  78. 

Evans,  E.  P.,  cited,  ii,  128,  note. 

Evans,  Sir  John,  cited,  i,  269,  note  ;  301, 
note. 

Evans,  L.  J.,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  370.     Cited,  309,  note. 

Eve,  representation  of  her  creation,  i, 
26.  Her  garments  made  by  the  Al- 
mighty, 27.  Identification  of  the  cav- 
ern which  she  inhabited  after  the 
expulsion  from  Eden,  3S  ;  ii,  240.  A 
deduction  made  from  the  story  of  her 
creation,  53,  54.  Origin  of  language 
used  by,  169.  A  crater  filled  by  the 
tears  of,  214. 

Evelyn,  John,  on  the  condition  of  Beth- 
lehem Hospital,  ii.  119. 

Everett,  Edward,  treatment  of,  at  Ox- 
ford, ii,  335,  330- 

Evil,  its  entrance  into  the  world,  i,  285. 

Evolution,  from  creation  to,  i.  1-88.  <  If 
ideas  of  creation,  4,  22.  Of  scholastic 
theology,  1 1.  Early  form  of  the  theory, 
14.  Its  development,  14,  15,  16,  50, 
51.  Reason  for  theological  opposition 
to,  22.  Evolution  mirrored  in  sacred 
books,  23.  Theological  and  scien- 
tific theories  of,  49-70.  Influence  of 
Genesis  on  a  belief  in,  52.  Influence 
of  theology,  52,  53.  Influence  of  De 
Maillet  on  the  development  of  the 
theory,  58.  Of  Lamarck,  63.  Of 
Chambers,  66.  In  man's  family,  so- 
cial, moral,  intellectual,  and  religious 
relations,  312.  Of  religion,  321.  Work- 
ing of  the  law  of  evolution  through  dif- 
ferentiation, ii,  314.  Its  efficiency  in 
the  reconstruction  of  religious  truths, 
394-396. 

Evolutionists,    irreligious   tendencies  oi 

certain  earlier,  i,  69. 
Ewald,  H.,  on  Darwinism,  i,  78.     Influ- 
ence of  his  historical  studies,  ii,  327. 
Cited,  i,  257,  note  ;  374.  note. 
Excommunication  of  witches  at  Salem, 
ii,  150.     Revocation  of  these  excom- 
munications,   154.     Excommunication 
of  Colenso,  350,  351,  352. 
Exodus,  cited,  i,  95,  note. 
Exorcism,   examples  of  its  employment 
against  the  power  of  the  air,  i,  340- 
342.     Use  of,  to  cure  insanity,  ii,  106- 
109.     Rivalry  between  Catholics  and 
Protestants  in  the  use  of,  116.      futil- 
ity of  baptismal,  1 1 7.    Employment  of, 


422 


INDEX. 


in    epidemics   of  diabolic   possession, 
138. 
Explorations,  difficulty  of  accounting  for 
distribution  of  animals  increased  by,  i, 

Exupere,  St.,  a  protector  against  hail,  i, 

344- 
Eye,  mediaeval  medicine  for  the,  ii,  38. 
Eyebright,    its  medicinal  properties,  ii, 

33. 
Eysat,  his  development  of  Kepler's  com- 

etary  theory,  i,  202. 
Eyzies,  remains  of  man  found  at,  i,  274. 
Ezekiel,  on  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i,  99. 

His  mention  of  the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  223 

On  the  taking  of  usury,  278.     Cited,  i, 

95,  note  ;    100,  note  ;    102,   note  ;    ii, 

265,  note. 

Fabre  d'Envieu,  on  evolution,  i,  73. 
Cited,  77,  note. 

Fabri,  Felix,  on  the  wonders  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  232,  233.  Cited,  233, 
note. 

Fabricius,  his  observation  of  the  sun's 
spots,  i,  133.     Of  comets,  200. 

Fairholme,  on  the  Deluge,  i,  233.  Cited, 
234,  note. 

Fairies,  stories  of,  a  proof  of  a  lower 
stage  of  civilization,  i,  308. 

Faith,  ages  of,  their  relation  to  ascer- 
tained truth,  ii,  66. 

Falconer,  his  investigation  of  Boucher  de 
Perthes's  discoveries,  i,  273. 

"  Fall  of  Man,"  the,  and  anthropology,  i, 
284-302.  And  ethnology,  303-309. 
And  history,  310-322.  Natural  origin 
of  the  belief  in,  285.  Evolution  of  this 
belief  in  the  Church,  286.  Origin  of 
the  legend  of,  301  ;  ii,  208. 

Fallmcrayer,  his  investigation  of  the 
Dead  Sea  myths,  ii,  249.  Cited,  223, 
note  ;   254,  note. 

Falsan,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Fanaticism  in  Europe  during  the  four- 
teenth century,  ii,  137. 

Fanning  mills,  denunciation  of  their  use 
in  Scotland,  ii,  285. 

Faraday,  contemptuous  characterization 
of,  i,  406.     His  work,  407. 

Fargardy  cited,  ii,  378,  note. 

Farinator,  Matthias,  his  allegories  of  me- 
teorological phenomena,  i,  338.  Cited, 
338,  note. 

Farrar,  his  acceptance  of  evolution,  i,  82. 
His  address  at  Darwin's  funeral,  83. 
On  the  methods  of  opposing  evolution, 
84.  On  the  relations  between  science 
and  religion,  320.  On  the  new  phi- 
lology, ii,  206.  Cited,  i,  87,  note ; 
128,  note;    170,  note;    172,  note;  ii 


98,  note  ;  101,  note  ;  182,  note  ;  192, 
note  ;  196,  note  ;  207,  note  ;  293,  note  ; 
295,  note  ;  297,  note  ;  300,  note  ;  301, 
note  ;  309,  note  ;  316,  note  ;  321,  note  ; 
332,  note  ;  333,  note. 

Fathers  of  the  Church,  their  views  of 
the  creation,  i,  3.  Of  the  pre-exist- 
ence  of  matter,  4.  Their  belief  re- 
garding light  and  darkness,  13.  Their 
sacred  science,  6,  25,  42.  Their  views 
on  the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  91. 
Their  biblical  chronology,  249.  On 
magic,  384.  Their  theories  as  to  the 
origin  of  language,  ii,  175.  Their 
condemnation  of  the  taking  of  inter- 
est, 265,  266,  278. 

Fausboll,  his  discovery  of  the  story  of 
the  judgment  of  Solomon  in  Buddhis- 
tic folklore,  ii,  383.  Cited,  379,  note  ; 
384,  note. 

Faussett,  his  attack  on  Milman's  writ- 
ings, ii,  340. 

Favaro,  his  publication  of  documents  re- 
lating to  Galileo's  trial,  i,  131.  Cited, 
142,  note  ;   144,  note  ;  160,  note. 

Fenton,  his  treatise  on  usury,  ii,  275. 

Ferdinand  VII,  his  hostility  to  scientific 
study,  i,  408. 

Fergusson,  Sir  James,  on  early  Egyptian 
ait,  i,  261.  Cited,  265,  note;  310, 
note. 

Fetiches,  employed  by  Christians  against 
storms,  i,  342.  Employment  of,  against 
disease  by  Christians,  ii,  30,  71.  Em- 
ployment of,  by  Protestants,  45-49. 
From,  to  hygiene,  67-96. 

Fetichism,  a  stage  in  man's  religious  de- 
velopment, i,  321.  Cessation  of  its 
employment  to  avert  storms,  372.  De- 
velopment of  veneration  for  relics 
into,  ii,  40.  Development  of,  in  seven- 
teenth century,  78,  79. 

Fever,  jail,  ravages  cf,  ii,  83,  84.  Ty- 
phoid, deaths  from,  92.  Yellow  and 
typhus,  disappearance  of,  94. 

Fian,  Dr.,  torture  of,  i,  360. 

Fiesole,  Bishop  of,  his  attack  on  Galileo, 

i.  134- 

Figs  from  the  Dead  Sea,  Seetzen's  ex- 
amination of,  ii,  248,  249. 

Figuier,  cited,  i,  123,  note;  381,  note; 
399,  note  ;  ii,  143,  note  ;  164,  note  ; 
165,  note. 

Filhol,  his  discovery  of  missing  links 
among  the  carnivora,  i,  81. 

Filiatrault,  Abbe,  on  the  smallpox  epi- 
demic at  Montreal,  ii,  60. 

Filmer,  Sir  R.,  his  attack  on  the  doctrine 
of  the  sinfulness  of  interest-taking,  ii, 
276.     Cited,  277,  note. 

Filthiness,  an   evidence   of  sanctity,  ii, 


INDEX. 


423 


69.  In  England  during  the  Middle 
Ages,  82. 

Fir,  the  Scotch,  in  the  peat-beds  of  Den- 
mark, i,  293. 

Firmament,  representation  of,  in  cathe- 
dral sculpture,  i,  I.  Chaldean  and 
Hebrew  conceptions  of,  50.  Views  of 
the  early  fathers  regarding,  324. 

Fishes,  Luther  on,  i,  26.  Their  creation, 
51.  Not  named  by  Adam,  ii,  196. 
Fossils  of,  found  in  the  Lebanon  re- 
gion, 246. 

Fiske,  John,  his  error  as  to  Copernicus's 
preface,  i,  123,  note.  Cited,  87,  note  ; 
no,  note  ;  ii,  173,  note  ;  218,  note. 

Flade,  Dietrich,  his  trial  and  death  for 
witchcraft,  i,  356,  357,  302.391  ;  ».  rI9- 

Flagellants,  processions  of,  ii,  71. 

Flammarion,  cited,  i,  123,  note  ;  124,  note  ; 
135,  note  ;  157,  note  ;  165,  note. 

Flannel,  red,  its  medicinal  properties,  ii, 

39- 
Fleetwood,    his    argument    against    the 

taking  of  interest,  ii,  274. 
Fleury,  Robert,  his  picture  of  an  insane 

woman  insulted  by  the  mob,  ii,  112, 

note. 
Flies,  held  to  be  superfluous  animals,  i, 

30.     Luther  on,  30.     St.  Basil  on,  53. 
Flinn,  the  Rev.  Mr.,  cited,  i,  322,  note. 
Flint,  cited,  i,  2S9.  note. 
Flintshire,  miraculous  cure  in,  ii,  42. 
Flood,  Chaldean  belief  of  the  evolution 

of  the  universe  from  the  primeval,  i,  14. 
Flood  of  Noah.     See  Deluge. 
Florence,  Archbishop  of,  his  condemna- 
tion of  Galileo's  theories,  i,  134. 
Florence    of    Worcester,   cited,    i,    177, 

note. 
Florence,  frescoes  in  the  Baptistery  at,  i, 

13- 

Florence,  Cecco  d'Ascoli  burned  at,  i, 
107.     God's  punishment  of,  332. 

Fohi,  naming  of  the  animals  by,  ii,  197. 

Folklore,  evidence  of  man's  upward  tend- 
ency furnished  by,  i,  308.  Its  solu- 
tion of  vital  problems,  ii,  393.  Light 
thrown  on  miracles  by  study  of,  65.  Of 
China,  197. 

Fontenelle,  his  play,  The  Comet,  i,  200. 
Cited,  200,  note. 

Foote,  Bruce,  cited,  i,  281,  note. 

Forbes,  President,  his  attacks  on  New- 
ton, i,  127,  148. 

Forbiger,  cited,  ii,  214,  note. 

Forchammer,  his  investigation  of  the 
shell-heaps  and  peat-beds  of  Scandina- 
via, i,  292,  293. 

Forster,  on  the  malign  influence  of  com- 
ets, i,  205.  Cited,  206,  note  ;  ii,  68, 
note. 


Fort,  cited,  ii,  27,  note  ;  30,  note  ;  32, 
note  ;  35,  note  ;  45,  note  ;  75,  note. 

Forty,  mystic  significance  of  the  number, 
ii,  298. 

Fossils,  older  theories  of,  i,  27,  28.  Theo- 
ries as  to  their  origin,  210-241 ;  ii, 
211.  Belief  in  the  fall  of  man  under- 
mined by,  i,  289.  Finding  of,  near  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  246,  247. 

Foster,  his  studies  in  Sanskrit,  ii,  T94,  379. 

Foucault,   his  pendulum  experiment,  i, 

I57\ 
Fouillee,  cited,  i,  62,  note. 

Foulkes,  Guy.     See  Clement  IV. 

Four,  mystic  significance  of  the  number, 
i,  6  ;  ii,2g6. 

Foxes,  distribution  of,  i,  46. 

Fraas,  on  the  stone  implements  of  Egypt, 
i,  298.     Cited,  301,  note. 

Fracastoro,  his  theory  of  fossils,  i,  214. 
His  employment  of  medical  means  in 
the  cure  of  the  possessed,  ii,  140. 

Fractures,  mediaeval  cures  for,  ii,  42. 

France,  interference  with  scientific  study 
i  1,  i,  41.  Opposition  to  Darwinism  in, 
73.  Opposition  to  scientific  study  in, 
393,  408-410.  Control  of  educaiion  by 
the  Church  in,  408,  409.  Efficacy  of 
the  royal  touch  in,  ii,  48.  The  plague 
in,  86.  Recent  history  of  hygiene  in, 
92,  93.  Opposition  to  the  witch  per- 
secution in,  123,  125.  Humane  treat- 
ment of  the  insane  in,  130-132.  Scep- 
tical tendency  regarding  diabolical  in- 
fluence in,  141,  142.  Spread  of  epi- 
demic of  possession  in,  145,  155,  156, 
157.  Treatment  of  questions  of  super- 
natural influence  in,  155,  156.  Prog- 
ress of  the  science  of  philology  in,  199, 
200.  Imprints  on  rocks  in,  212.  At- 
tempts to  defend  the  taking  of  inter- 
est in,  27S.    Fruitless  biblical  criticism 

in.  333- 
Francis  of  Assisi,  St.,  hallucinations  of, 

ii,  120. 
Francis  Xavier,  St.     See  Xavier. 
Franciscans,  persecution  of  Roger  Bacon 

by,  i,  388,  389.     Their  care  for  the  in- 
sane, ii,  105. 
Franck,  cited,  i,  355,  note. 
Francke,  his  works  of  mercy,  ii,  4.     His 

efforts  against  the  theory  of  diabolic 

possession,  127. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  his  lightning  rod,  i, 

364-372,  407.     His  acceptance  of  the 

theory  of  inoculation,  ii,  57.      Cited, 

58,  note. 
Franz,    Kaiser,   of  Austria,   his   attitude 

toward  learning,  i,  269. 
Franz,  W.,  his  sacred  history  of  animals, 

i,  38. 


424 


INDEX. 


Fraser,  Bishop,  appointment  of  his  suc- 
cessor, i,  372. 

Fraser  s  Magazine,  cited,  ii,  348,  note. 

Fraunhofer,  his  discovery  in  spectral 
analysis,  i,  17. 

Frazer,  J.  G.,  cited,  ii,  73,  note. 

Fredault,  cited,  ii,  3,  note  ;  32,  note  ;  34, 
note  ;  53,  note. 

Frederick  II,  Emperor,  his  attempt  to 
promote  a  more  fruitful  study  of  na- 
ture, i,  37.  Encouragement  of  medical 
science  by,  ii,  34,  35,  49. 

Frederick  William  I,  of  Prussia,  his  op- 
position to  the  theory  of  demoniacal 
possession,  ii,  126. 

Frederick  William  IV,  his  opposition  to 
the  higher  criticism,  ii,  32S,  329. 

Freeman,  cited,  i,  177,  note. 

Freiburg,  representation  of  the  creation 
in  the  cathedral  of,  i,  3,  note. 

Frejus,  Bishop  of,  his  purchase  of  the 
island  of  St.  Ilonorat,  i,  370. 

French  Chronicles,  Guizot  collection, 
cited,  ii,  25,  note. 

French  Revolution,  the,  its  real  nature, 
i,  312.  Its  effect  on  the  development 
of  science,  406.  On  the  progress  of 
reform  in  the  treatment  of  the  insane, 
ii,  131,  134.  Reaction  from  the,  its 
influence  on  religion,  247. 

French  Revolution  of  1830,  its  influence 
on  education,  i,  270. 

Frere,  John,  his  discovery  of  flint  instru- 
ments near  Hoxne,  i,  268. 

Frey'ag,  cited,  ii,  117,  note. 

Friedrich,  J.  B.,  cited,  ii,  211,  note  ;  213, 
note  ;  218,  note. 

Friedrichs,  on  the  transformation  of  Lot's 
wife,  ii,  256. 

Friends,  Society  of,  their  hospital  for  the 
insane  in  Philadelphia,  ii,  130. 

Frogs,  held  to  be  superfluous  animals,  i, 
30.  St.  Basil  on,  53.  Blood  of,  its  use 
as  medicine,  ii,  39.  Exorcism  of, 
113- 

Fromund  (Fromundus),  his  argument 
against  the  earth's  movement,  i,  131, 
note.  His  treatise  against  Galileo,  139  ; 
ii,  186.  His  theory  of  comets,  i,  183, 
186.  On  the  causes  of  thunder,  362. 
Cited,  105,  note  ;  116,  note  ;  122,  note  ; 
140,  note  ;  154,  note  ;  186,  note  ;  363, 
note. 

Froude,  cited,  ii,  392,  note. 

Fruit  of  the  Dead  Sea,  description  of,  ii, 
228,  232.     Myth  of,  248,  249. 

Fry,  Elizabeth,  her  works  of  mercy,  ii,  4. 

Fulk  of  Chartres,  his  visit  to  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  229. 

Fulke,  Dr.  William,  on  the  antiquity  of 
the  Hebrew  tongue,  ii,  181. 


Fuller,  on  Queen  Elizabeth's  cure  of  a 
Catholic  by  king's  touch,  ii,  46. 

Furfooz,  human  bones  found  at,  i,  290. 

Furrer,  Dr.  Conrad,  on  the  Dead  Sea  le- 
gends, ii,  259.     Cited,  260,  note. 

Furrows,  glacial,  origin  of,  i,  241. 

Gabet,  Father,  his  mission  to  Thibet,  ii, 
379.  38o. 

de  Gabriac,  his  attitude  toward  Galileo, 
i,  147. 

Gage,  his  opinion  of  Sir  John  Mande- 
ville's  honesty,  ii,  231,  note. 

Gailhabaud,  cited,  ii,  n  1,  note. 

Gaisford,  Dean,  on  Buckland's  visit  to 
Italy,  i,  232. 

Galapagos  Islands,  Darwin's  work  at,  i, 
66. 

Gale,  Theophilus,  his  theory  that  all  the 
languages  and  learning  of  the  world 
are  drawn  from  the  Hebrew  records, 
ii,  185.     Cited,  188,  note. 

Galeazzo,  his  belief  regarding  a  comet, 
i,  176. 

Galen,  his  place  in  the  development  of 
medical  science,  ii,  33,  51.  Arabic 
translation  of  his  works,  34.  On  the 
use  of  saliva  as  medicine,  41.  His 
study  of  insanity,  99.  Revival  of  his 
ideas,  104. 

Galiani,  his  attack  on  theological  views 
of  usury,  ii,  281. 

Galilee,  Sea  of,  its  relation  to  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  221. 

Galileo,  value  of  his  work,  i,  15.  Oppo- 
sition to,  22.  Effect  of  his  struggles 
on  Descartes,  57.  Recent  attitude  of 
the  Catholic  Church  toward,  82.  Re- 
fusal of  the  Church  to  permit  his  teach- 
ing of  the  heliocentric  theory,  124. 
The  war  upon,  130-140.  First  attack 
on  him,  131.  His  protest  against  lit- 
eral interpretation  of  the  Bible,  132. 
Discovery  of  the  satellites  of  Jupiter, 
131 ;  of  the  mountains  and  valleys  in 
the  moon,  132.  Weapons  used  in  the 
attack  on  him,  134,  135.  Plots  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Pisa,  136.  His  trial  be- 
fore the  Inquisition,  137.  His  works 
condemned  by  the  Congregation  of  the 
Index,  138.  His  salary  as  professor 
taken  away,  139.  Victory  of  the 
Church  over,  140-152.  His  Dialogo, 
140,  157,  note.  His  second  trial,  141- 
143.  His  recantation  of  his  theories, 
142,  159.  Persecution  of  him,  143. 
Treatment  of  him  after  his  death,  146, 
147.  Results  of  the  victory  over,  152- 
157.  The  victory  of  his  ideas,  153. 
Retreat  of  the  Church  after  its  victory 
over,  158-170.     Cause  of  his  condem- 


INDEX. 


425 


nation,  159,  160,  161.  I  lis  letters  to 
Castelli  and  the  Grand  Duchess  Chris- 
tine, 132,  136,  159.  Condemnation  of 
his   theories  by  the    Inquisition,   137, 

159.  Attempts  made  to  blacken  his 
character,  162.  Documents  relating 
to  his  trial  carried  to  Paris,  162.  Their 
publication  at  Rome,  162.  The  claim 
that  he  was  not  condemned  ex  cathe- 
dra, 163,  218,  note.  Repeal  of  the 
condemnation  of  the  Church  against, 
157,  note.  New  epoch  of  belief 
brought  in  by,  249,  284.  His  influ- 
ence on  physics,  407.  Answer  of  his 
opponents  regarding  the  moons  of 
Jupiter,  ii,  160. 

Gall,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40. 

Galloway,  William,  his  attempt  to  prove 
Hebrew  the  primitive  language,  ii, 
203.     Cited,  207,  note. 

Galton,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  68. 

Gama,  Vasco  da,  effect  of  his  voyages,  i, 
45.  Influence  of  the  religious  spirit 
on,  113.  Influence  of  his  voyages,  ii, 
238,  271. 

Gard,  cavern  of,  excavations  in,  i,  270. 

Gardner,  his  reforms  in  the  treatment  of 
insanity,  ii,  134. 

Gargoyles,  sacred  science  of  the  Middle 
Ages  illustrated  by,  i,  36. 

Garucci,  cited,  i,  95,  note. 

Gases,  mediceval  theory  of,  i,  402.  Evo- 
lution of  scientific  theory  of,  402-404.. 

Gassendi,  on  the  unauthoritative  nature 
of  Galileo's  condemnation,  i,  164.  His 
development  of  Kepler's  cometary 
theory,  202. 

Gaudry,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  70,  81. 
His  discovery  of  prehistoric  imple- 
ments, 273. 

Gauffridi,  the  burning  of,  for  causing  di- 
abolic possession,  ii,  143. 

Gaume,  Abbe,  cited,  ii,  160,  note. 

Gautier,  Leon,  cited,  i,  102,  note. 

Gebler,  his  publication  of  Galileo's  trial, 
i,  131.  On  the  forgery  of  documents 
relating  to  Galileo,  137,  note.  Cited, 
125,  note  ;  132,  note  ;  142,  note  ;  144, 
note;  146,  note  ;  147,  note  ;  157,  note; 

160,  note  ;  163,  note. 

Geddes,  Alexander,  his  work  in  biblical 
criticism,  ii,  326,  327. 

Geikie,  C,  his  explanation  of  the  Dead 
Sea  myths,  ii,  261.  Cited,  222,  note; 
257,  note  ;  261,  note. 

Geikie,  J.,  cited,  i,  281.  note. 

Geiler  of  Kaisersberg,  on  bell-ringing 
against  storms,  i,  347,  note.  His  de- 
nunciation of  Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 

Gelasius,  l'ope,  his  condemnation  of  the 
Physiologus,  i,  32. 


Generation,  spontaneous,  Redi's  inquiry 
into  the  doctrine  of,  i,  42. 

Genesis,  two  accounts  of  creation  in,  i,  2, 
5,  19,  20,  27.  Csedmon's  paraphrase 
of,  4.  Its  account  of  man's  physical 
origin,  22.  Source  of  the  legends  in, 
20,  22.  Value  of  its  records,  23.  Me- 
diaeval illustrations  of,  27.  St.  Augus- 
tine on,  53.  From  Genesis  to  geology, 
209-248.  Vincent  of  Beauvais's  com- 
mentary on,  378.  Story  of  the  Tower 
of  Babel  quoted  from,  ii,  171.  Ac- 
count of  the  Dead  Sea  in,  223,  226. 
Newton's  view  as  to  the  date  of  its  au- 
thorship, 310.  Theological  belief  of 
its  perfection,  312.  Hupfeld's  work 
on,  328.  Cited,  i,  13,  note  ;  95,  note  ; 
ii,  226,  note. 

Geneva,  cause  of  plague  at,  ii,  75.  Care 
for  the  insane  at,  105.  Calvinists  of, 
their  belief  in  the  divine  origin  of  the 
Hebrew  vowel  points,  17  s. 

Genevieve,  St.,  votive  offerings  at  her 
shrine,  ii,  42. 

Genoa,  sanitary  condition  of,  ii,  81.  Es- 
tablishment of  the  bank  of,  2S0. 

Gentleman's  Magazine,  on  the  malign  in- 
fluence of  comets,  i,  205. 

Geocentric  doctrine,  the  germ  of  scien- 
tific thought  on  astronomy,  i,  11 5-1 20. 

Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire,  his  work  in  de- 
veloping the  theory  of  evolution,  i,  63, 
64.     Cited,  228,  note. 

Geography,  i,  88-113.  Attempts  to  rec- 
oncile the  truths  of,  with  the  Mosaic 
accounts  of  creation,  19. 

Geology,  its  evidence  regarding  carniv- 
orous animals,  i,  29.  Regarding  ser- 
pents, 30.  From  Genesis  to,  209-248. 
Attempts  to  reconcile  it  with  Genesis, 
234.  Its  refutation  of  the  theory  of 
the  fall  of  man,  289. 

George,  St.,  value  of  his  relics,  ii,  29. 

de  Geramb,  on  the  wonders  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  247.     Cited,  ii,  24S,  note. 

Gerbert.     See  Sylvester  II,  Pope. 

Gereon,  St.,  relics  of  him  and  his  Theban 
band  of  martyrs,  ii,  29. 

Gerhard,  his  interpretation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, ii,  307. 

Germain,  cited,  i,  345,  note. 

German,  ability  of  possessed  persons  t<> 
speak,  ii,  159,  161.  As  the  primitive 
speech,  184. 

Germans,  their  deep  religious  feelings,  i, 

239. 
Germany,  opposition  to  Darwinism  in,  i, 
73,  74.  Witch  persecution  in,  355— 
360,  3S5  ;  ii,  75.  Fast  struggles  of 
the  superstition  in,  123.  Dying  out  of 
the  theory  of  demoniacal  possession  in, 


426 


INDEX. 


126.  Epidemics  of  diabolic  posses- 
sion in,  136,  137,  141,  156.  Persecu- 
tion of  Jews  in,  13S.  Progress  of  the 
science  of  philology  in,  200,  201.  Ex- 
planatory myths  in,  212,  214.  First  de- 
velopment of  biblical  criticism  in,  333. 

( ierson,  John,  his  efforts  to  remove  the 
restrictions  on  money-lending,  ii,  270. 

Gervase,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  41  , 

Gervase  of  Tilbury,  his  story  illustrating 
the  idea  of  the  "  waters  above  tin- 
heavens,"  i,  95,  note. 

Gesenius,  influence  of  his  Hebrew  Crani- 
mar,  ii,  327. 

Gesner,  C.,  his  work  in  science,  i,  41.  On 
the  antiquity  and  purity  'if  Hebrew,  ii, 

181.     Cited,  182,  note. 
Gesta  P hilippi  Augusti  Francorum  Regis, 

cited,  ii,  54,  note. 
Giambullari,  cited,  ii,  182,  note. 
Giants,  fossil  remains  of,  i,  227,  : 

Gibbon,  cited,  i,    172,  note  ;  ii,    ',4.  note; 

36,  ttote  ;  308,  note. 
Gibil,  priests  of,  their  power  over  disease, 

ii,  1. 
Gifts,  bestowal  of,  to  avert  pestilence,  ii. 

71- 

Giles,   St.,  his  control   of  the   elements 

through  prayer,  i,  340. 
Gillieron,  his  attempt   to  give  the  chro- 

nology  of  various  prehistoric  periods, 

..'•  283-, 
( ■inguene',  cited,  i,  i"7,  note. 
Oiotto,  his  representation  of  Evi 

tion,  ii,  54. 
Giraffe,    proof    •■!"    the    development   of 

species  show  n  by,  1. 
Giraldus  Cambrensis,  on  the  animals  of 

Ireland  i,  37.    Cited,  37,  note  ;  ii,  112, 

note. 
Giraudet,  Gabriel,  on  the  wonders  offh< 

I  »cad  Sea,  ii,  234,  2  ;;.  Position  in 
which  he  found  the  statue  ol  I  ot's 
wile,  262.      Cited,  235,  note. 

Glacial  epoch,  existence  of  man  in  Eng- 
land lii-tore  the,  i,  276. 

Gladstone,  on  the  nebular  hypothesis,  i, 
is.  His  attempts  to  reconcile  the  two 
accounts  in  Genesis,  i<>.  On  evolu- 
tion, 76.  His  attempt  to  reconcile  the 
scriptural  and  the  scientific  theories  of 
creation,  243,  244  ;  ii,  186.  Its  failure, 
i,  246.  On  the  new  philology,  ii,  203. 
His  allegorical  interpretations  of 
legends,  294.  The  beginning  of  his 
political  career,  335.  His  part  in  the 
prosecution  of  Colenso,  352.  Castiga- 
tion  of,  at  the  hands  of  Huxley,  391. 
His  perfect  courtesy  in  controversy, 
392.  Cited,  i.  244,  note  ;  ii,  204,  note  ; 
295,  note  ;  341,  note;  392,  note. 


Glanvil,  belief  in  witchcraft  supported  by, 

i,  361. 

Gloucester,  Bishop  of.     See  ELLICOTT. 

Gnats,  St.  Basil  on,  i,  53. 

Gnostic  struggle,  its  influence  on  the 
theory  of  disease,  ii,  27. 

Gnostics,  their  opinion  regarding  the  na- 
ture of  stars,  i,  114. 

Goa,  centre  of  missionary  activity  in  the 
East,  ii,  8. 

God,  representation  of.  in  cathedral 
sculpture,  i,  3,  note  ;  24.  Work  of 
creation  ascribed  to,  in  the  Apostles' 
and    Nicene   Creed-,    10.      Kepi'. 

tion  of,  in  the  sacred  art  of  the  Middle 
^ges,  11.     In  the  Sistine  frescoes,  11, 

12.     Literal   creation   of   the   universe 

ascribed  to,  14.      Cudworth's   rejection 

of  the  theory  of  his  direct  personal  ac- 
tion on  the  universe,  16.  Representa- 
tion of,  in    Reisch's  I k,   2d.      \     . 

tador,  27.  Creation  of  noxious  crea- 
tures by,  28.  Meaning  of  the  state- 
ment that  he   begal  Adam  in    Hi-  own 

likeness,    ;<■.     \\  orm  -  b<  lieved  not  to 

have  been  created   by,    \2.      I  Hi 

better  conception  of  his  dignity  on  the 
theory  of  evolution,  54.     His  position 

in  the  tenth  luaw  n,   1  r.       1  he  .1  ,  rip- 

tion  ot  meteorological  phenomena  di- 
rectly to,  331,  332.  Early  conception 
of,  ii,  174.  In  the  media  vol  mysteries, 
1  i  [ahveh,  Jehovah, 

Godeberte,  St.,  protection  against  wet 
and  drj  weather  given  by,  1,  344. 

Gods  of  the  heathen,  held  to  be  devils,  i, 
330,  382  ;  ii.  27,  68,  1  ;<■. 

Cods  ol  the  Nile,  representation  of,  as 
creating  man  out  ot  claj ,  i,  25. 

( loethals,  cited,  ii,  53,  note. 

,  on  the  ends  of  Providence,  i,  43. 
His  pn -(illation  of  an  evolutionary 
doctrine,  '12.     Cited,  44,  note. 

( log,  terror  inspired  bj ,  i,  101. 

Goldberg  Catechism,  its  declaration  re- 
garding the   taking  of  interest,  ii,  272. 

Goldstaub  and  Wendriner,  cited,  i,  36, 
note. 

Goldziher,  cited,  ii,  3<)4,  note. 

( ioliath,  story  of,  ii,  .-■ 

de  Condi,  Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Paris, 
his  scepticism  regarding  diabolic  pos- 
session, ii,  142. 

Gooch,  cited,  i,  281,  note. 

Goodwin,  C.  \\\,  his  article  in  Essays 
and  Reviews,  ii,  342. 

Gordon,  Bertrand  de,  his  devotion  to 
science,  ii,  35. 

Gordon,  Mrs.,  cited,  i,  233,  note  ;  ii,  30, 
note. 

Gore,  cited,  ii,  391,  note  ;  392,  note. 


INDEX. 


427 


Goropius,  his  attempt  to  prove  Dutch  the 
language  of  paradise,  ii,  190. 

Gospels,  higher  criticism  applied  to  the 
first  three,  ii,  3 S5.  To  the  fourth,  385, 
336. 

Gosse,  his  attempt  to  reconcile  geology 
with  Genesis,  i,  167,  241,  242,  296. 
Cited,  28,  note  ;  242,  note  ;  301,  note. 

Gottsched,  his  views  on  comets,  i,  206. 

Goujon,  Jacques,  on  the  statue  of  Lot's 
wife,  ii,  242.     Cited,  243,  note. 

Graf,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
32S,  330. 

Grafenberg,  S.  von,  cited,  ii,  140,  note. 

Grandier,  Urbain,  trial  and  execution  of, 
for  witchcraft,  ii,  144. 

Grand  Voyage  de  Hierusalem,  cited,  ii, 
237,  note. 

Grant,  cited,  i,  204,  note. 

Grasser  and  Gross,  their  verses  on  the 
nature  of  comets,  i,  193.  Cited,  194, 
note. 

Grasshoppers,  generation  of,  1,  55.  Ex- 
orcism of,  ii,  113- 

Grassi,  Father,  his  denunciation  of  Gali- 
leo, i,  139. 

Gratz,  Dr.  Lorenz,  his  belief  in  the  statue 
of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  252.    Cited,  254,  note. 

Gravina,  cited,  i,  3,  note. 

Gravitation,  law  of,  theological  opposi- 
tion to,  i,  16. 

Gray,  Asa,  Duffield's  attack  on,  i,  79. 
Cited,  70,  note  ;  87,  note. 

Gray,  Bishop  of  Cape  Town,  his  ex- 
communication of  Colenso,  ii,  350, 
352.  Exclusion  of  Colenso  from  his 
own  cathedral  by  the  Vicar-General 
of,  351.     Life  of,  cited,  353,  note. 

Gray's  Inn  Lane,  in  London,  the  finding 
of  a  stone  weapon  near,  i,  267. 

Great  Britain,  witch  persecution  in,  i, 
360,  361.  Recent  history  of  hygiene 
in,  ii,  90-93.  Reception  of  the  re- 
vised version  of  the  Bible  in,  291. 
See  also  England,  Scotland,  Wales. 

Greece,  development  of  geological  truth 
in,  i,  209.  Of  science,  374.  Theory 
of  disease  in,  ii,  2,  67,  98,  100.  Myths 
of,  210,  213.  The  taking  of  interest 
in,  264. 

Greek,  translation  of  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures into,  ii,  289. 

Greeks,  their  theory  of  evolution,  i,  14, 
52.  Their  conception  of  the  earth's 
sphericity,  91.  Their  belief  regarding 
the  centre  of  the  earth,  9S.  Their 
theory  of  the  fall  of  man,  285.  Le- 
gend of  the  attempt  to  scale  heaven  as 
told  among,  ii,  173- 

Greek  Church,  relaxation  of  its  strictness 
against    money-lenders,    ii,    267.      Its 


prevention  of  Russian  peasants  from 
eating  potatoes,  235. 

Green,  cited,  ii,  58,  note  ;  74,  note  ;  84, 
note. 

Gregorovius,  cited,  ii,  71,  note  ;  74,  note. 

Gregory  the  Great,  Pope,  his  sanction  of 
the  Physiologus,  i,  32.  Influence  of 
St.  Augustine  on,  211.  His  hostility 
to  medical  science,  ii,  36.  Plague  at 
Rome  in  the  time  of,  70.  His  theory 
of  demoniacal  possession,  IOI,  120. 
His  exegesis  of  Job,  300,  301.  Cited, 
300,  note. 

Gregory  IX,  Pope,  on  the  taking  of  in- 
terest, ii,  267. 

Gregory  X,  his  decree  against  money- 
lenders, ii,  267. 

Gregory  XIII,  Pope,  his  sanction  of  a 
sacred  chronology,  i,  253.  Exorcism 
against  the  "  power  of  the  air "  em- 
ployed by  him,  340.  Erigena's  work 
placed  on  the  Index  by,  ii,  302. 

Gregory  XV,  Pope,  proceedings  for  the 
canonization  of  Xavier  before,  ii,  14, 
15,  20. 

Gregory  XVI,  Pope,  his  hostility  to  the 
Academy  of  the  Lincei,  i,  394.  His 
hostility  to  science,  408. 

Gregory  of  Nazianzen,  St.,  on  the  possi- 
bility of  sailing  beyond  Gibraltar,  i, 
102.  His  assertion  regarding  the  mir- 
acles of  Cosmo  and  Damian,  ii,  23. 
On  the  cause  of  disease,  27.  Cited, 
28,  note  ;  98,  note. 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  St.,  his  views  on  the 
creation,  i,  3.  On  evolution,  53.  On 
the  divine  interposition  during  the 
battle  against  the  Quadi,  332.  On 
the  origin  of  language,  ii,  175,  195. 
His  condemnation  of  the  taking  of 
interest,  266.  Cited,  176,  note  ;  266, 
note. 

Gregory  of  Tours,  on  the  cause  of  dis- 
ease, ii,  27.  On  the  result  of  consult- 
ing Jewish  physicians,  44.  Cited,  23, 
note  ;  45,  note. 

Grenelle,  human  bones  found  at,  i,  290. 

Gretser,  on  the  power  of  devils  over  the 
elements,  i,  341.  Cited,  341,  note ; 
342,  note  ;  365,  note. 

Grew.  N.,his  book  on  the  creation,  i,  42. 
Cited,  44,  note. 

Griffins,  representation  of,  entering  the 
ark,  i,  38. 

Grimm,  Jacob,  his  work  in  philology,  ii, 
200.     Cited,  211,  note  ;  218,  note. 

Gross,  his  verses  on  the  nature  of  comets, 
i,  193. 

Grote,  his  work  in  Greek  history,  ii,  341. 
Cited,  i,  91,  note;  375,  note;  ii,  68, 
note  ;  90,  note  ;  265,  note  ;  277,  note. 


42! 


I\M   \. 


Grotefend,  deciphering  of  Assyrian   in-  I 
scriptions  by,  ii,  170. 

Groti  li.cval  sacred  science  il- 

lustrated by,  i,  36. 

Grotius,  bis  place  in  history,  ii,  134. 
His  acceptance  of  Capellus's  views  on 
tin-  Hebrew  tongue,  178.  On  the  tak- 
ing of  intercut,  276. 

Groton,  cas<  "ii   in, 

ii,  146. 

( ii  vii a  us,  cited,  i,  102,  note  ;  ii,  211,  note  ; 
231,  note. 

( ruacci,  on  the  power  of  witches  over  the 
elements,  i,  J4°-     ( 'ited,  34".  note. 

Guicciardini,  liis  views  regarding  the 
nature   of  Galileo's  condemnation,   i, 

.(,4. 
Guichard,  Stephen, his  method  of  tracing 

etymologies  back  to  the    Hebrew,   ii, 

182,  [83.     Cited,  1-7,  note. 
Guide  des    Visiteurs  </   terins,  cited,   i, 

371,  note. 
Guillaume  de  Nangis,  cited,  i.  177,  note. 
( ruillemin,  cited,  i,  1  74.  note  ;  170.  note  ; 

1  -y,  note  ;  -•■  k  \  note  ;  a  4,  a 

note. 

Guizot,  on  the  necessity  of  Rome's  de- 
cline, 1.  }'  -■     (  ited,  \i  1 .  note. 

<  iunther,  cited,  i,  126,  note. 

<  iiistrow,  origin  ol  the  I  '<  \  il's  I  ake  near, 

ii,  214. 

Haarlem,  cases  of  hysteria  in  the  hos- 
pital at.  ii,   1  <> ) 

Hackel,    scientific    activity    of,     i, 
Cited,  228,  note. 

Hadji  Abdul-Aziz,  the  legend  of,  ii,  209,  > 

JIM. 

1  lam.  Dr.  Antonio  de,  bis  re  earches 
into  the  causes  of  diabolic  possession, 
ii,  [26,  1 27.     Cited,  1.  |7  \.  note. 

Hagermann,  on  Darwinism,  i,  73. 

Hale,  Sir  Matthew,  his  views  on  th, 
ation,  1,  21  v     On  witchcraft,  361. 

!  I      s.  on  sacred  chronology,  i.  - 

Hall,  S.  C,  cited,  ii,  43,  note. 

Hill,  protest  of  the  clergy  of,  against  a 
Jewish  physician,  ii,  44. 

Hallam,  on  the  theological  method  of 
scientific  study,  i,  380.  Cited,  140, 
note;  381,  note;  ii,  53,  note;  270, 
note. 

Halley,  the  modern  theory  of  comets  es- 
tablished by  him,  i,  t88,  203  ;  ii,  208. 

Halley  comet,  the   fear   inspired  by  it,  i, 

177'.   's> 
Hallucination,    religious,    treatment    of 

this  disease,  ii,  120. 
Hamann,  his  painting  of  Yesalius,  ii.  54 

and  note. 
Hamard,  Abbe,  his  attack  on  the  scien- 


tific views  regarding  prehistoric  man, 

i,  300.      Cited,  302,  note. 

Hamburg,  scientific  explanation  of  a  case 
<  if  insanity  in,  ii,  127. 

Hamburg,  1'rotestant  Church  at,  opposi- 
tion to  the  lightning-rod  by  the  au- 
thorities ol.  1.   -,'.7. 

Hamilton,  Sir  \Y.  R.,  on  the  condemna- 
tion of  science,  i,  411. 

Hampden,  Bishop,  his  Bampton  Lec- 
tures, 11,  357.     Cited,  i,  3-1.  1  1 

Hamy,  his  discovery  of  prehistoric  imple- 
ments in  Egypt,  i,  298. 

Han  dynasty,  transformation  of  the  first 
counsellor  of  the,  ii,  215. 

Hangman,  medicinal  properties  <>f  his 
touch,  ii,  40. 

Harper,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 

r  //,/.',  cited,  ii,  1  1  I,  note. 

Harsnet,  his  influence  against  belief  in 

witchcraft,  i, 
Hartford,  cases  of  diabolic  possession  in, 

ii,  146. 

aim,  cited,  i,  399,  note. 

I  lam,  infli  1  \.  assii  on,  i,  69. 

Harvard   Universil  's  influence 

at,  i,  69      Prejudice  against   s,  ientific 

sludj  «  nl  "i,  his   ap- 

proval  of  Cotton    Mather's   hook    on 
w  it.  In  rati,  ii,   1 

II. ist-,   Karl,  cited,    ii,    iti,   note;    129, 

note. 

rheodor,  his  efforts  to  revive  the 
theory  of  the  divine  inspiration  of  the 

I  Kim  w    VOWel  p'int-.  11.1;-     I  79, 

■  ited,  ii.  2,  not,- ;  4;,  note  ;   53, 
note  ;  <>-,  note  ;  74,  note. 
Hatch,   E ,   <  ited,    11,    2<)s,   note 

Hathorn,  his  activity  in  the  Salem  witch 

persecution,  ii,  1 :  -■ 
1  [auber,  cited,  ii,  7s,  note. 
1  [aug,  1  ited,  ii,  379,  note. 
Haupt,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 

1  [ausser,  cited,  ii,  30.  note. 
Haxthausen,  (.ited,  ii,  286,  note. 
Haynes,  H.  W.,  his   discovery   of  stone 

implements    in    the    Nile   Valley,    and 

their     significance,    i.    -',-.    299,    302, 

note.      Cited    280,    note;    281,    note; 

283,  note  ;  301,  note. 
Healing,  growth  of  legends  of,  ii,  5-22. 
Hearing,   mystical    theory    regarding,    i, 

396. 
Heat,  mechanical  theory  of,  i.  i~. 
Heaven-axe,  sent  by  an  Emperor  of  the 

East  to  a  German  Emperor,  i,  266. 
Heavens,  legends  of  an  attempt  to  scale 

the,  i,  96. 


INDEX. 


429 


Heber,  the  original  language  of  the  race 
preserved  by  his  family,  ii,  175.  ^3. 
[85.  .      , 

Hebrew,  the  original  language,  11,  109, 
175  179,  180,  204.  Mediaeval  behet 
as  t'o  the  origin  of  the  vowel  points  in, 
176.  Traces  of,  in  the  New  World, 
184.  Held  to  be  cognate  with  the 
original  speech  of  mankind,  194.  An- 
tiquity of,  206. 
Hebrews,  source  of  their  ideas  ot  crea- 
tion i,  2,  14.  20,  22.  Chaldean  influ- 
ence on,  51.  Origin  of  their  concep- 
tions of  geography,  90.  Theory  ot 
disease  among,  ii,  2,  27.  Their  theory 
of  the  origin  of  language,  169. 
Hebrews,  Epistle  to  the,  Luther's  views 

as  to  its  authorship,  ii,  3°5- 
Hecker,  cited,  ii,  74.  note  ;    136,   note  ; 
138,  note  ;  140,  note  ;   144.  note  \  T5°. 
note;  157,  note;  158,  note  ;  163,  note.  _ 
Hecquet,  on  the  epidemic  of  hysteria  in  , 

Paris,  ii,  155-  .         ... 

Heerbrand,  Jacob,  his  illustration  of  the 
purpose  of  comets,  i,    184.      His  de- 
nunciation of  scientific   observations, 
201.     Cited,  184,  note  ;  201,  note. 
Hegesippus,  his  mention  of  the  statue 

of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  262. 
Heidmann,  on  the  wonders  of  the  Dead 

Sea  region,  ii,  237.     Cited,  241,  note. 
Heliocentric  theory,  i,  120-130. 
Hell,  location  of,  i,  96,  97. 
Heller,  August,  cited,  i,  122,  note;  132, 
note  ;  154,  note  ;  178,  note  ;  376.  note  ; 
378,  note  ;  ii,  35.  note. 
Heller,  Joachim,   his   observation    of   a 

comet,  i,  200. 
Hellwald,  cited,  ii,  236,  note. 
Helmholtz,  his  influence  on    physics,  1, 

4°7-  . 

Hengstenberg,    his    opposition    to    the 

higher  criticism,  ii,  328,  329. 
Henrion,  on  the  size  of  the  antediluvians, 

i,  227. 
Henry  IV,  of  England,  his  decree  against 

chemical  experiments,  i,  391. 
Henry  VII,  laws  against  usury  under,  11, 

271.     Statute  of,  cited,  271,  note. 
Henry  VIII,  cure  of  king's  evil  by,  ii,  46- 

Modification  of  the  law  against  usury 

under,  273,  274. 
Henry  IV,  of   France,   his    disquietude 

over  a  case  of  diabolic  possession,  ii, 

141.  , 

Hensel,  Rector,  his  work,   The  Restored 

Mosaic  System  of  the  World,  directed 

against  the  Copernican  theories,  i,  129. 
Henslow,  George,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 
Heraulos,  legend  of,  ii,  215. 
Herbert,  Dean,  on  species,  i,  65. 


Herbst,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
362. 

Hercules,  his  death  announced  by  dark- 
ness over  the  earth,  i,  172. 

Herder,  his  presentation  of  an  evolution- 
ary doctrine,  i,  62.  The  period  of,  ii, 
192.     His  woik  in  biblical  criticism, 

325-327- 
Heredity,  Darwin  on,  i,  67. 
Hereford  Cathedral,  map  of  the  world  at, 

i.  99-  ,  .. 

Heresy,  unlimited  torture  in  cases  ot,  11, 

77-  ,     .. 

Hermes,  effects  of  his  wrath,  11,  214. 

Hermogenes,  Tertullian's  attack  on,  i,  4. 

Herodotus,  his  account  of  the  lake-dwell- 
ers of  Lake  Prasias,  i,  295.  Cited,  ii, 
68,  note  ;  73,  note. 

Herolt,  Joannes,  on  consecrated  bells,  i, 
347,  note.  His  denunciation  of  Jewish 
physicians,  ii,  44- 

Herophilus,  development  of  medical  sci- 
ence by,   ii,  2,  26.     Denunciation  of, 

31.  32- 
i  Herschel,  his  work  in  astronomy,  1,  17. 
His  ridicule  of  the  Anglican  Church's 
attempt  to  fetter  science,  150,  411. 
Hertha,  fate  of  the  priestess  of,  ii,  213. 
Hervas,  his  great  work  in  comparative 

philology,  ii,  190,  191. 
Her/,  Krau,  charge  of  witchcraft  against, 

ii,  128. 
Herzog,  cited,  i,  >o6,  note  ;  ii,  3°9.  note. 
Hesiod,   on    the  golden   age  and  man's 

fall,  i,  285.     Cited,  287,  note. 
Hesperornis,  remains  of  the,  i,  81. 
Hevel,  his  development  of  Kepler's  com- 

etary  theory,  i,  202,  203. 
Heyd,  cited,  ii,  286,  note. 
Heylin  (or  Ileylyn)  on  the  relative  posi- 
tions  of  water  and   land,    i,  101,  102. 
On  the  cure  of  babes  by  king's  touch, 
ii,  47,  48.     Cited,  i,  102,  note. 
Heyn,    his    treatise   on    comets,    i,    206. 

Cited,  i,  207,  note. 
Hierarchies  of  angels,  the  three,  i,  119, 

396. 
Hierarchy,  the  heavenly,  description  of, 
in  the  writings  of  Dionysius  the  Are- 
opagite,  ii,  315- 
Hieronymus.     See  Jerome. 
Higgins,  cited,  i,  172,  note  :  173,  note ; 

345,  note. 
High-priest's  robe,    its   signification,  ii, 

294. 
Hilarion,  St.,  evidence  of  his  sanctity, 

ii,  69. 
Hilary  of  Poictiers,  St.,  on  the  creation, 

i,  6.    His  attempt  to  reconcile  the  two 

accounts  of  the  creation  in  Genesis,  7. 

On  the  firmament,  324.    On  the  num- 


430 


INDEX. 


ber  of  books  in  the  Old  Testament,  ii, 
296.  His  exegesis  of  the  Scripture, 
298.  Cited,  i,  8,  note  ;  324,  note  ;  ii, 
300,  note. 

Hildegard,  Abbess  of  Rupertsberg,  her 
efforts  in  behalf  of  medicine,  ii,  35. 

Hill,  Rowland,  his  defence  of  vaccina- 
tion, ii,  58. 

Hillel,  Rabbi,  his  rules  of  interpreting 
the  Scripture,  ii,  293.  Golden  rule  for- 
mulated by,  293. 

Hindus,  their  belief  regarding  the  centre 
of  the  earth,  i,  98.  Their  legend  of 
the  confusion  of  tongues,  96  ;  ii,    172. 

Hippocrates,  foundation  of  medical  sci- 
ence by,  ii,  2,  26.  Arabic  translation 
of  his  work,  34.  On  demoniacal  pos- 
session, 37.  On  madness,  98.  Revival 
of  his  ideas,  104. 

Hippopotamus,  its  remains  found  in  cav- 
erns in  England,  i,  277. 

Histoire  Litteraire  de  la  France,  cited,  ii, 
32,  note. 

Historians,  sacred,  source  of  their  ma- 
terials, i,  21.     Their  genius,  21. 

History,  general,  its  illustration  of  the 
unknown  from  the  known,  i,  310.  The 
"  Fall  of  Man  "  and,  322. 

History,  natural,  Aristotle's  development 
of,  i,  31. 

Hitchcock,  Edward,  annoyance  of  him 
by  theologians,  i,  223,  271. 

Hitzig,  his  defence  of  Colenso's  criticism 
of  a  biblical  text,  ii,  351. 

Hobbes,  persecution  of,  for  his  work  in 
biblical  criticism,  ii,  317.  Cited,  321, 
note. 

Hodden  Bridge,  the  epidemic  of  hysteria 
at,  ii,  157,  158. 

Hodge,  on  evolution,  i,  79,  81.  On  the 
verbal  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  ii,  369- 
Cited,  i,  86,  note. 

Hoefer,  cited,  i,  36,  note;  37,  note;  122, 
note  ;  157,  note  ;  381,  note  ;  391,  note  ; 
3qS,  note  ;  399,  note  ;  404,  note. 

Hoffman,  on  Job  s  boils,  ii,  62. 

Hofmann,  on  Hindu  jugglery,  ii,  66, 
note. 

Hogarth,  condition  of  Bethlehem  Hos- 
pital shown  by  his  pictures,  ii,  129. 

Hohenlohe,  Prince,  cures  wrought  by, 
ii,  65. 

Holland,  civilization  developed  by  the 
barbarian  tribes  of,  i,  31 1.  Epidemic 
of  jumping  and  dancing  in,  ii,  137-  Of 
biting,  141.  Departure  from  scriptural 
doctrines  regarding  interest  in,  276. 
First  development  of  biblical  criticism 
in,  333. 
Holmes,  O.  W.,  cited,  ii,  58,  note. 
Holy  Land,  myths  of  the,  ii,  209-263. 


Holy  Office.     See  Inquisition. 

Holy  Sepulchre,  as  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  i,  99,  100. 

Homer,  cited,  ii,  3,  note  ;  73,  note;  21S, 
note. 

Hommel,  cited,  ii,  371,  note. 

Hondius,  cited,  i,  102,  note. 

Hone,  cited,  ii,  111,  note. 

Honiger,  cited,  ii,  74,  note. 

Honorat,  St.,  his  miracles,  i,  369. 

Honorius  III,  Pope,  his  encouragement 
of  medical  schools,  ii,  35.  His  decree 
against  surgery,  36.  His  condemna- 
tion of  Erigena's  work,  301. 

Honorius  of  Autun,  the  De  philosophia 
mttndi  ascribed  to,  i,  328,  note.  His 
explanation  of  storms,  329.  Cited, 
329,  note. 

Hooker,  J.,  Darwin's  statement  of  his 
theory  to,  i,  67. 

Hooper,  Bishop,  on  the  power  of  bells 
over  tempests,  i,  348.    Cited,  348,  note. 

Hooykaas,  Oort,  and  Kuenen.  See 
Oort. 

Hopkins,  Bishop  J.  H..  on  biblical  sanc- 
tion of  slavery,  ii,  368. 

Hopkins,  Matthew,  discovery  of  witches 
by,  i,  360. 

Horace,  his  views  as  to  the  development 
of  man,  i,  287,  288.     Cited,  287,  note. 

Horeb,  Mount,  tables  of  the  law  con- 
cealed on,  ii,  197. 

Home,  his  attacks  on  Newton,  i,  127, 
148.  Change  of  attitude  toward  the 
theory  of  fossils  in  a  new  edition  of 
his  works,  235. 

Horner,  his  excavations  in  the  Nile  Val- 
ley, i,  263,  298.  His  attempt  to  give 
the  chronology  of  various  prehistoiic 
periods,  283. 

Horse,  Bochart's  chapter  on  the,  i,  40. 
Marsh's  specimens  showing  the  evolu- 
tion of  the,  78,  79,  81. 

Horsley,  Bishop,  his  attacks  on  Newton, 
i,  127. 

Horst,  cited,  ii,  78,  note  ;  140,  note. 

Hospitals,  development  of  monastic  in- 
firmaries into,  ii,  33. 

H6tel-Dieu,  at  Lyons,  establishment  of, 
ii,  3.  At  Paris,  3.  Construction  of, 
by  Napoleon,  93,  94-  Treatment  of 
the  insane  at,  130. 

Hottinger,  on  the  phoenix,  i,  39.  His 
classification  of  languages,  ii,  189. 
Cited,  i,  40,  note  ;  ii,  192,  note. 

Houghton,  S.,  on  Darwinism,  i,  82. 
Cited,  86,  note. 

Howard,  John,  on  the  dangers  of  sci- 
ence, i,  222.  His  prison  reforms,  ii, 
84.  On  the  treatment  of  the  insane 
in  England,  132. 


INDEX. 


431 


Hove,  John,  on  comets  and  portents,  i, 
lio.     Cited,  180,  note. 

Hoxne,  discovery  of  flint  implements 
near,  i,  268. 

Hubbard,  cited,  i,  409,  note. 

Hubert,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40. 

Hue,  Father,  his  mission  to  China  and 
Thibet,  ii,  379-381.     Cited,  384,  note. 

Huet,  Bishop,  on  the  position  of  Moses 
in  Christian  and  heathen  theology, 
ii,  312.      His  attack  on  Le  Clerc,  321. 

Hugo,  Abbot  of  St.  Denis,  his  efforts  in 
behalf  of  medicine,  ii,  35. 

Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  on  the  creation,  i,  7. 
His  views  as  to  the  earth's  centre,  99. 
His  dictum  as  to  belief  b3fore  re- 
search, ii,  302,  30b.  Cited,  i,  8,  note  ; 
100,  note  ;  ii,  303,  note. 

Hugo,  Victor,  aesthetic  reaction  repre- 
sented by,  ii,  334,  note. 

Huguenots,  their  development  in  an  un- 
favourable  climate,    i,    311.     Insanity 
among,  ii,  121,  145.    Samuel's  argument 
to  Saul  used  against,  138. 
Hull,  on  the  geological  changes  in  Egypt, 

t  i»  299- 
d'Hulst,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 

363- 

Humbert,  King,  his  brave  course  during 
the  cholera  plague  in  Naples,  ii,  83, 
8t. 

Humboldt,  Alexander  von,  absence  of 
orthodox  clergymen  from  his  funeral, 
1,  151,  152.  His  speculations  on  the 
early  form  of  the  earth,  242.  On  the 
work  of  Albert  the  Great,  377.  Cited, 
no,  note  ;  112,  note;  153,  note  ;  202, 
note  ;  392,  note  ;  ii,  173,  note. 

Humboldt,  Wilhelm  von,  his  work  in 
philology,  ii,  200. 

Hume,  effect  of  theological  atmosphere 
on,  i,  58.  His  work  in  political  econ- 
omy, ii,  283.     Cited,  66,  note. 

Hunt,  T.  S.,  cited,  i,  19,  note. 

Hunter,  John,  his  work  in  medical  sci- 
ence, ii,  166. 

Hupfeld,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism, 
ii,  328. 

Hurons,  traces  of  the  Hebrew  tongue 
among,  ii,  184. 

Hutchinson,  Francis,  his  opposition  to 
the  witch  superstition,  i,  362. 

Hutchinson,  John,  his  attack  on  Newton 
in  his  Afoses's  Principia,  i,  127,  14S, 
154- 

Huxley,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  68,  70. 
His  reply  to  Wilberforce,  70.  On 
Prof.  Marsh's  series  showing  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  horse,  79.  His  refutation 
of  Gladstone's  attempt  to  reconcile 
Genesis    and    science,    245  ;    ii,    391. 


Cited,  i,  13,  note  ;  56,  note  ;  62,  note  ; 
87,  note  ;  215,  note  ;  230,  note  ;  233, 
note  ;  235,  note  ;  ii,  312,  note  ;  371, 
note  ;  376,  note  ;  392,  note. 

Hyacinth,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Hyacinthus,  story  of,  ii,  219. 

Hyena,  myth  regarding,  i,  33.  Remains 
of,  found  in  caverns,  270,  271,  277. 

Hyer,  R.  S.,  cited,  ii,  166,  note. 

Hygiene,  from  fetich  to,  ii,  67-96.  Re- 
cent history  of,  90-93. 

Hypnotism,  effect  of  discoveries  in,  on 
belief  in  miracles,  ii,  65.  A  cause  of 
epidemics  of  mental  diseases,  166. 

Hysteria,  in  convents,  ii,  121,  140,  141, 
143,  144,  156.  From  diabolism  to, 
135-167.  Epidemics  of,  135-157.  In 
English  cotton  mills,  158.  In  the 
Berlin  Charite  Hospital,  158.  In 
Lyons,  158.  Conditions  predisposing 
to,  158,  159.  Phenomena  of  mental 
disease  classified  under,  166. 

Ichthyornis,  exhibition  of  a  specimen  of, 
i,  81. 

Ichthyosaurus,  fossil  remains  of,  i,  81. 

Idiocy,  Luther's  views  on,  ii,  114. 

Idolatry,  a  stage  in  man's  religious  de- 
velopment, i,  321. 

Iken,  his  attempt  to  revive  the  theory  of 
the  divine  inspiration  of  the  Hebrew 
vowel  points,  ii,  178,  179. 

Illingworth,  cited,  i,  88,  note. 

Illness,  reason  why  God  permits,  ii,  118, 
note. 

Imagination  and  medicine,  relation  be- 
tween, ii,  64,  65,  166. 

Imitation,  a  cause  of  mental  disease,  ii, 
166. 

"Immaculate  Oath"  administered  to 
university  professors  in  Austria,  i,  319. 

Inchofer,  Father  Melchior,  on  Galileo's 
heresy,  i,  139.     Cited,  140,  note. 

Index,  the  condemnation  of  the  works 
of  Copernicus  and  Galileo  in,  i,  124, 
note;  125,  note;  138,  144,  152-160, 
164.  Of  the  work  of  Maes,  ii,  314.  Of 
works  criticising  the  False  Decretals, 
315.  Cited,  i,  159,  note;  165,  note  ; 
ii,  303,  note  ;  364,  note. 

India,  Nider  on  the  ants  of,  i,  36.  De- 
velopment of  belief  in  magic  in,  373. 
Theory  of  disease  in,  ii,  1,  72.  Xa- 
vier's  missionary  work  in,  6.  Jugglery 
in,  166,  note.     Myths  in,  210,  215. 

Indians,  plague  among,  ii,  85.  Con- 
sidered to  be  children  of  Satan,  145. 
Myths  among,  217. 

Indo-Germanic  languages,  classification 
made  by  Schlegel,  ii,  195. 

Infallibility,    papal,    committed    against 


432 


INDEX. 


the  double  motion  of  the  earth,  i,  15S. 

Difficulties  attendant  on  the  claim  to, 

ii,  277. 
Infamy,  the  Column  of,  in  Milan,  ii,  77. 
Infessura,  cited,  ii,  11,  note. 
Infidel,  use  of  the  epithet  by  theologians, 

Infidels,  prohibition  of  commerce  with, 
ii,  2S5. 

Ingolstadt,  University  of,  its  opposition 
to  the  Copernican  theory,  i,  126. 

Innkeepers,  country,  railroads  an  evi- 
dence of  the  divine  displeasure  against, 
ii,  2S5. 

Innocent  VIII,  Pope,  his  bull  against 
witches,  i,  351,  352,  385,  395  ;  ii,  74, 
77,  78,  117.  Reburial  of  the  Roman 
maiden  Julia  by,  10,  note. 

Innocent  XI,  Pope,  his  condemnation  of 
unorthodox  opinions  concerning  the 
taking  of  interest,  ii,  27S. 

Innspruck,  University  of,  its  attitude  to- 
ward the  Copernican  theory,  i,  128. 

Inoculation  against  smallpox,  theological 
opposition  to,  i,   319  ;  ii,  55-63. 

Inquisition,  the  Holy,  its  murder  of 
Bruno,  i,  15.  Its  attitude  toward  sci- 
ence, 57.  Its  trial  of  Galileo,  137. 
The  second  trial,  141-143.  Publica- 
tion by  it  of  Galileo's  recantation,  143. 
Forbids  a  new  edition  of  Galileo's 
works,  144.  Its  sanction  of  the  helio- 
centric theory,  156.  Its  condemna- 
tion of  Galileo's  theories,  137,  159. 
Its  views  regarding  the  nature  of  Gali- 
leo's condemnation,  164.  Misrepre- 
sentation of,  in  certain  Catholic  man- 
uals, 319.  Vesalius's  fear  of,  ii,  52. 
Its  decree  regarding  the  taking  of  in- 
terest, 283.     Its  retreat,  284. 

Insanity,  from  demoniacal  possession  to, 
ii,  97-134.  Theological  theory  of,  97, 
98,  9).  Luther's  ideas  on,  114.  Con- 
trol of  the  Church  over  the  treatment 
of,  117.  Its  connection  with  witch- 
craft, 1 17-124.  Reform  in  the  treat- 
ment of,  in  France,  130-132.  In  Eng- 
land, 132.  See  also  Lunacy,  Lu- 
natics. 

Inscriptions,  Assyrian,  treating  of  the 
creation,  i,  2,  14,  20. 

Insects,  early  belief  regarding  produc- 
tion of,  i,  52  Exorcism  of,  ii,  113. 
Entrance  of  Satan  into  a  human  body 
in  the  form  of,  120. 

Insurance,  bell-ringing  superseded  by, 
as  protection  against  storms,  i,  368. 
Religious  scruples  against  life  insur- 
ance, ii,  286. 

Interest,  origin  and  progress  of  hostility 
to  loans  at,  ii,  264-275.     Results   of 


the  hostility  to  taking,  269,  270.     Ex- 
orbitant rates   of,    269.     Evasions   of 
the  prohibitions  against  the  taking  of, 
272.     Distinction  between   usury  and, 
275,  278.     Retreat  of  the  Church  from 
its  hostility  to  loans  at,  276-287. 
Interpretation    of   Scripture,  the    older, 
ii,  288-311.     Beginnings  of  scientific, 
311-332.     The   continued   growth  of" 
scientific,  333-343-    The  closing  strug- 
gle over,  349-370.     Victory  of 'the  sci- 
entific and  literary  methods  of,  370- 
392- 
Ionian    philosophers.      See     Philoso- 
phers. 
Irby,  his  investigation  of  the  Dead  Sea 
myths,  ii,  249.    Cited,  225,  note  ;  254, 
note. 
Ireland,  early  account  of  the  animals  of, 
i,  37.     Explanatory  myths  in,  ii,  211, 
216.      Protestant  archbishops  of,  their 
attack  on  Essays  and  Reviews,  343. 
Irenaens,  on  the  story  of  Lot's  wife,  ii, 
227,  262.     His    resistance  to  allegor- 
ical interpretation,  295.     On  the  num- 
ber of  the  Gospels,  296.    On  the  quies- 
cence of  the  divine  word,  391.     Cited, 
22S,  note  ;  297,  note. 
Irish    peasantry,    their    development    in 

unfavourable  climates,  i,  311. 
Isaiah,  his  mention  of  the  Dead  Sea,  ii, 
223.     Newton's  views  as  to   the   au- 
thorship   of  the    prophecies    of,    310. 
Cited,  i,  95,  note. 
Isenbiehl,  his  attempt  to  criticise  a  pas- 
sage in  Isaiah,  ii,  324.     1  ersecution  of, 
324- 
Isensee,  cited,  ii,  3,  note ;  35,  note  ;  74, 
note  ;  99,  note  ;   138,  note  ;  139,  note. 
Isidore  of  Seville,  St.,  his  work  in  sacred 
science,  i,  33.    On  the  doctrine  of  sec- 
ondary creation,  55.    His  belief  in  the 
sphericity  of  the    earth,  97.     On  the 
antipodes,  104,  105.     On  the  effect  of 
man's  fall  on  the  heavenly  bodies,  115. 
Influence   of  St.  Augustine   on,  211. 
His   sacred  and  profane  chronology, 
251.     His     cosmography,     326.     His 
views  on  science,  376.    Cited,  56,  note  ; 
115,  note  ;  211,  note  ;  252,  note  ;  326, 
note. 
Isis,  priests  of,  their  power  over  disease, 
ii,    1.     Temple    of,   at    Pompeii,    ma- 
chinery in,  43. 
Islands,  distribution  of  animals  on,  i,  45. 
Ismael,    Rabbi,  his   elaboration    of  the 
rules    of   interpretation  of  the   Scrip- 
ture, ii,  293. 
Israelites,  their  genealogy,  i,  79.     Types 
of,    sculptured     on     early     Egyptian 
monuments,  259. 


INDEX. 


433 


Italy,  treatment  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
antipodes  in  the  fourteenth  century 
in,  i,  106,  107.  Opposition  to  science 
in,  392,  393.  Establishments  for  the 
insane  in,  ii,  106.  Last  struggles  of 
witch  superstition  in,  123.  Epidemics 
of  diabolic  possession  in,  136,  140,  141. 
Imprint  of  Christ's  hands  or  feet  on 
stones  in,  212.  Rate  of  interest  in, 
269.  Opposition  to  the  taking  of 
interest  in,  279,  280.  Extirpation  of 
fair  biblical  criticism  in,  333. 

Ivan  of  Cronstadt,  Father,  alleged  mirac- 
ulous cures  wrought  by,  ii,  22,  note  ; 
?4- 

lackson,  on  sacred  chronology,  i,  256. 

Jacob,  identification  of  the  spot  where 
he  wrestled  with  the  angel,  i,  38  ;  ii, 
240. 

Jacob  (pseud.).     See  Lacroix,  P. 

Jaeger,  his  discovery  of  a  skull  among 
certain  Quaternary  remains,  i,  290. 

Jahn,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
362. 

Jahveh,  Jehovah,  priests  and  prophets 
of,  their  power  over  disease,  ii,  I. 
The  giver  of  language  to  the  He- 
brews, 169.  His  approval  of  the 
Septuagint,  289.  His  disapproval,  290. 
Early  stones  of.  2)3.  The  name  a 
distinguishing  mark  of  one^  of  the 
narratives  in  Genesis,  319.  See  also 
God. 

James  I,  of  England,  witchcraft  persecu- 
tion encouraged  by,  i,  36.).  Cure  of 
king's  evil  by,  ii,  47.  His  sanction  of 
the  taking  of  interest,  275.  Cited,  i, 
363,  note. 

James  II,  cure  of  king's  evil  by,  ii,  47.  4§- 

James,  C,  his  refutation  of  Darwinism, 
i,  75.     Cited,  77,  note. 

famieson,  cited,  ii,  207,  note. 

Janitschek,  cited,  ii,  ir,  note. 

Jansen,  on  the  date  of  creation,  i,  253. 

Jansenists,  cures  wrought  by,  ii,  24. 
Miracles  among,  155.  Their  bones 
dug  up  and  scattered,  186. 

Janssen,  cited,  i,  201,  note  ;  333,  note. 

Januarius,  St.,  efficacy  of  the  blood  of 
this  martyr,  i,  188.  Intercession  of, 
in  behalf  of  Naples,  ii,  78.  The 
miracle  of  the  liquefaction  of  his 
blood,  79,  80.  Efficacy  of  his  relics, 
81. 

Japan,  Xavier's  missionary  work  in,  ii,  6. 
Explanatory  myths  in,  214. 

Jaundice,  medixval  cure  for,  ii,  39. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  want  of  interest  in 
church  architecture,  ii,  334,  note. 

Jehoram,  cause  of  his  dysentery,  ii,  2. 

56 


Jehovah.     See  JAHVEH. 

Jehovistic  account  of  the  creation,  i,  51. 

J  elf,  cited,  ii,  348,  note. 

Jena,  suffocation  of  a   cellar-digger   at, 

i.  404-  , 
Jenner,  his  discovery  of  vaccination,   ii, 

Jensen,  his  work  in  deciphering  ancient 
records,  i,  20,  51.  Cited,  3,  note  ;  54, 
note;  90,  note;  117,  note;  ii,  371, 
note  ;  374,  note. 

Jeremiah,  his  mention  of  the  Dead  Sea, 
ii,  223. 

Jerkers,  an  American   religious   sect,  ii, 

159- 

Jeroboam,  the  golden  calf  of,  i,  40. 
Jerome,  St.,  on  the  work  of  creation  on 
the  second  day,  i,  6.  On  the  dragon, 
34.  His  views  as  to  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  99.  On  the  second  book  of 
Esdras,  in.  On  the  form  of  the 
earth's  crust,  210.  On  the  antiquity 
of  the  earth,  250.  On  the  waters 
above  the  firmament,  324.  On  divine 
interposition  during  the  battle  against 
the  Quadi,  332.  His  belief  that  the 
air  is  full  of  devils,  337.  On  the  evi- 
dence of  St.  Hilarion's  sanctity,  ii,  69. 
On  the  original  language  of  the  race, 
175.  His  ignorance  of  the  Hebrew 
vowel  points,  177.  Citation  of,  Dy 
Whittaker,  181.  On  the  permanence 
of  Lot's  wife's  statue,  228,  262.  His 
condemnation  of  the  taking  of  inter- 
est, 266.  On  the  number  of  books  in 
the  Old  Testament,  296.  On  Origen's 
greatness,  298.  His  influence  on  the 
oracular  interpretation  of  the  Bible, 
301.  Belief  in  the  divine  inspiration 
of  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  308. 
His  indifference  to  the  Mosaic  author- 
ship of  the  Pentateuch,  311.  Cited, 
i,  100,  note  ;  324,  note  ;  337,  note  ;  ii, 
71,  note;  98,  note;  176,  note;  266, 
note  ;  300,  note. 
Jerusalem,  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i, 
99.  Imprints  on  stones  in,  ii,  212. 
Patriarch  of,  his  approval  of  Hauss- 
mann  de  Wandelburg's  book,  262. 
The  rabbinical  schools  at,  292. 
Jesuits,  their  opposition  to  Leibnitz,  i,  58. 
Use  of  torture  by,  353.  Their  hostil- 
ity to  the  Jansenists,  ii,  154.  Their 
agency  in  bringing  a  knowledge  of 
Sanskrit  into  Europe,  194.  Their  at- 
tempts to  explain  away  the  Church's 
opposition  to  the  taking  of  interest, 
282. 
fesus,  representation  of  his  creation  of 
the  earth,  i,  12,  note.  His  resurrec- 
tion typified  in  the  birth  of  the  lion's 


434 


INDEX. 


cubs,  35.  Miraculous  announcement 
of  his  birth,  172.  Absence  of  dogma 
in  his  teachings,  286.  His  relics  at 
the  monastery  of  Lerins,  370.  His 
use  of  saliva  in  curing  blindness,  11,41. 
His  intercession  in  behalf  of  Naples, 
78.  His  descent  into  hell,  115.  In- 
fluence of  the  story  of  his  temptation 
on  belief  in  demoniacal  possession,  115. 
Efficacy  of  his  handkerchief  against 
possession,  159.  His  mother  tongue, 
180.  Imprint  of  his  hands  and  feet 
on  stones,  212.  His  reference  to  the 
Dead  Sea,  223.  His  use  of  parables, 
263.  His  formulation  of  the  golden 
rule, 293.  His  letter  to  Abgarus  proved 
a  fraud,  303,  316. 

Jethro,  Moses's  occupation  while  tending 
the  sheep  of,  ii,  197. 

Jevons,  cited,  i,  19,  note;  131,  note; 
132,  note  ;  157,  note  ;  229,  note  ;  402, 
note. 

Jevvett,  the  Rev.  Dr.,  cited,  i,  408,  note. 

Jews,  the,  their  belief  regarding  the  cen- 
tre of  the  earth,  i,  99.  Their  belief  in 
a  golden  age,  286.  Use  of  stone  knives 
in  their  sacred  rites,  300.  Scientific 
research  by,  391.  Development  of 
medical  science  by,  ii,  33,  34.  Their 
superiority  as  physicians,  44.  Preju- 
dice against,  44.  Remarkable  sanitary 
system  of,  72.  Persecution  of,  for  caus- 
ing pestilences,  72-74,  82,  89.  Influ- 
ence of  Persian  ideas  on,  100.  Perse- 
cution of,  to  avert  epidemics,  138. 
Efforts  of  popes  and  kings  to  protect 
them,  138.  Legend  of  the  confusion 
of  tongues  among,  170-174.  Their  ac- 
ceptance of  the  story  of  Lot's  wife, 
226,  241,  261.  Usury  permitted  to, 
268.  Effect  of  this  permission,  270. 
Their  legends  regarding  the  Septua- 
gint,  289,  290.  Foundation  laid  by 
them  in  Alexandria  for  the  oracular 
interpretation  of  the  Bible,  300. 

Job,  cause  of  his  boils,  ii,  2. 

Job,  book  of,  account  of  creation  in,  i,  2. 
Its  value,  23.  Mention  of  the  unicorn 
in,  39.  Texts  from,  supporting  the 
theological  theory  of  creation,  242. 
Account  of  the  Flood  in,  ii,  191. 
Cited,  i,  13,  note  ;  91',  note  ;  95,  note. 

Joel,  cited,  i,  175,  note. 

John,  St.,  alleged  epistles  of  Dionysius 
addressed  to,  ii,  315. 

John,  Gospel  of.  higher  criticism  applied 
to,  ii,  385,  386,  Present  opinion  re- 
garding the  authorship  of,  386.  Cited, 
101,  note. 

John  the  Baptist,  St.,  relics  of,  at  the 
monastery  of  Lerins,  i,  370. 


John  XIII,  Pope,  great  bell  of  the  Lat- 
eran  baptized  by,  i,  345. 

John  XXII,  Pope,  his  bulls  against  al- 
chemists and  sorcerers,  i,  384,  395. 

John  I,  of  Aragon,  privilege  of  dissection 
granted  by,  ii,  50. 

John  II,  of  Portugal,  influence  of  the 
religious  spirit  on,  i,  113. 

John  III,  of  Portugal,  his  request  for  an 
account  of  Xavier's  miracles,  ii,  12. 

John  of  Damascus,  on  comets,  i,  175. 
Story  of  Barlaam  and  Josaphat  attrib- 
uted to,  ii,  381.     Cited,  i,  175,  note. 

John  of  San  Geminiano,  on  the  form  of 
the  earth,  i,  95.  His  explanation  of 
the  "arrows  of  the  thunder,"  329. 
Cited,  95,  note ';  329,  note ;  ii,  269, 
note. 

John  of  Solms,  Count,  Lot's  wife's  statue 
seen  by,  ii,  232.     Cited,  233,  note. 

John  of  Winterthur,  cited,  i,  344,  note. 

Johns,  B.  G.,  cited,  i,  73,  note. 

Johnson,  Edward,  cited,  ii,  86,  note. 

Johnson,  John,  on  the  origin  of  letters, 
ii,  197.     Cited,  200,  note. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  cited,  i,  140,  note. 

Jolly,  cited,  i,  153,  note. 

Joly,  cited,  i,  269,  note  ;  275,  note  ;  291, 
note. 

Jonah,  identification  of  the  place  where 
he  was  swallowed  by  the  whale,  i,  38  ; 
ii,  240.     Story  of,  208. 

Jones,  Rowland,  his  attempt  to  prove 
Celtic  the  primitive  language,  ii,  191. 
Cited,  192,  note. 

Jones,  Sir  William,  his  studies  in  San- 
skrit, ii,  194,  379.  On  the  language  of 
Noah,  194.     Cited,  196,  note. 

Jones,  William,  of  Nayland,  his  attack 
on  the  Newtonian  theory,  i,  148. 

Jordan,  D.  S.,  influence  of  Agassiz  on,  i, 
69.     Cited,  49,  note. 

Jordan,  water  for  baptizing  bells  brought 
from  the,  i,  346.  Miraaulous  powers 
of  the  waters  of,  ii,  26.  Its  relation 
to  the  Dead  Sea,  221.  Passage  of  its 
waters  through  the  Dead  Sea  without 
mingling  with  it,  231,  232. 
Josaphat,  St.,  canonization  of  Buddha 
under  the  name  of,  ii,  381-383  ;  384, 
note.  His  church,  382.  His  relics, 
382.  Exposure  of  the  legend,  382,  3S3. 
Joseph,   origin   of   the   story   of,   ii,  208, 

375- 
Joseph,  St.,  relics  of,  at  the  monastery  of 

Lerins,  i,  370. 
Joseph   II,   Emperor,  his    edict    against 

bell-ringing,  i,  348.    His  efforts  against 

the   theory  of  diabolic  possession,  ii, 

127. 
Josephus,  on  the  story  of  Lot's  wife,  ii, 


INDEX. 


435 


226,  261,  262.  On  the  number  of 
books  in  the  Old  Testament,  296. 
Cited,  i,  173,  note  ;  ii,  101,  note  ;  226, 
note. 

Joshua,  his  position  in  Eusebius's  chro- 
nological tables,  i,  250. 

Joule,  his  influence  on  physics,  i,  407. 

Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  cited,  i, 
302,  note. 

Jowett,  his  part  in  Essays  and  Reviews, 
ii,  342.  Cited,  i,  375,  note  ;  ii,  308, 
note  ;  367,  note. 

Jude,  St.,  his  references  to  the  Dead  Sea, 
ii,  223. 

Judea,  theory  regarding  the  cause  of 
plagues  in,  ii,  67,  68. 

Jugglery  in  India,  ii,  166,  note. 

Julia,  singular  preservation  of  her  body, 
ii,  10,  note. 

Julian,  his  consultation  of  magicians,  i, 
382. 

Julian,  Antonio,  his  views  on  the  use  of 
cocaine,  ii,  61. 

Julius  II,  Pope,  Sistine  frescoes  executed 
at  command  of,  i,  11.  His  division  of 
the  New  World  between  Spain  and 
Portugal,  10S.  His  bull  against  sor- 
cery, 385. 

Jumpers,  a  sect  of  Methodists  in  Wales, 
ii,  157.     In  America,  159. 

Jumping,  epidemics  of,  ii,  136-138,  157, 
163. 

Jupiter,  his  relation  to  storms,  i,  323. 
The  Almighty  substituted  for  him  as 
hurler  of  thunderbolts,  332.  A  minis- 
ter of  Satan,  336.  The  god  of  thunder, 
336.  Efforts  to  dethrone,  ii,  173.  Early 
stories  of,  293. 

Jupiter,  its  place  in  the  spheres,  i,  11S. 
Its  moons  discovered  by  Galileo,  131. 

Jurieu,  his  hostility  to  Bayle,  i,  199. 
Cited,  200,  note. 

Jussieu,  on  thunder-stones,  i,  267.  His 
work  in  comparative  ethnology.  303. 

Just,  St.,  staff  given  to  St.  Patrick  by,  i, 
369.     Value  of  his  relics,  ii,  28. 

Justinian,  Emperor,  his  condemnation 
of  lending  money  at  interest,  ii,  267. 

Justin  Martyr,  his  allegorical  interpreta- 
tion of  Scripture,  ii,  295.  Cited,  296, 
note. 

Kabbalah,  interpretation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures by  the,  i,  395. 

Kangaroo,   difficulty  caused  theologians 
by,  i,  48.     Development  of  speci* 
lustrated  by,  63.     Difficulty  of  account- 
ing for  its  presence  in  Australia,  211. 

Kant,  his  presentation  of  the  nebular 
theory,  i,  17.     Influence  of  theological 


atmosphere  on,  58.  The  period  of,  ii, 
192.  Influence  of  his  ethics  on  honest 
thought  in  Germany,  333.  Cited,  i,  19, 
note. 

Karnak,  list  of  kings  at,  i,  258. 

Kaulbach,  bis  representation  of  insanity, 
ii,  120. 

Kayser,  A.,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism, 
ii,  328,  330. 

Kayser,  G.  C,  his  attempt  to  sustain  the 
old  theory  of  philology,  ii,  200,  201. 
Cited,  206,  note. 

Keble,  John,  on  the  conferring  of  honor- 
ary degrees  on  men  of  science,  i.  41  6. 
His  influence  on  English  thought,  ii, 
334.  On  the  want  of  belief  in  excom- 
munication in  England,  352. 

Keble  College,  acceptance  of  the  theory 
of  evolution  at,  i,  82.  Foundation  of, 
ii,  358.   _ 

Keener,  Bishop,  on  evolution,  i,  So,  Si. 

Keil,  on  the  futility  of  geology,  i,  237. 
Cited,  ii,  260,  note. 

Keller,  on  the  lake-dwellers, i,  294.  Cited, 
309,  note. 

Kelvin,  Lord  (Sir  W.  Thompson),  his  in- 
fluence on  the  development  of  physics, 
1,407.^ 

Kent's  Cavern,  its  exploration,  i,  269. 

Kepler,  influence  of  his  work,  i,  15.  His 
works  condemned  by  the  Congregation 
of  the  Index,  138.  His  contribution 
to  scientific  knowledge,  153,  154.  His 
religious  spirit,  168.  His  views  re- 
garding comets,  183,  201,  202.  His 
willingness  to  accept  a  compromise 
with  the  theological  view,  204.  On 
the  date  of  creation,  253.  His  influ- 
ence on  physics,  407.  Cited,  105,  note  ; 
122,  note  ;   130,  note. 

Kessler  cave,  the  discovery  of  rude  carv- 
ings in,  i,  274. 

Ketu,  punishment  of  a  nymph  for  offend- 
ing, ii,  215. 

Khait  Bey,  mosque  of,  at  Cairo,  imprint 
of  Mohammed's  feet  on  stones  in,  ii, 
212. 

Kidd,  his  essay  in  the  Bridgewater  series, 

J'43-. 
King,  cited,  ii,  126,  note. 

King's  evil,  scrofula  known  as,  ii,  46. 

Kings,  the  Three,  their  relics  at  Cologne, 

ii,  29. 
Kings  of  Egypt,  lists  of,  i,  258. 
Kings,   books  of,  Newton's  views  as  to 

their  authorship,  ii,  310. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  on    Darwinism,  i,    s2. 

Cited,  86,  note  ;  87,  note  ;  ii,  53,  note  ; 

95,  note. 
Kingsley,  Prof.  James,  his  reply  to  Prof. 

Stuart,  of  Andover,  i,  224. 


43^ 


INDEX. 


Kirby,  his  essay  in  the  Bridgewater  series, 

i.  43- 
Kircher,  Father,  his  work  in  sacred  sci- 
ence, i,  38.     Cited,  ii,  173,  note. 
Kirchhoff,  F.  A.  T.,  cited,  ii,  103,  note  ; 

106,  note  ;  119,  note  ;  121,  note  ;   127, 

note  ;   136,  note  ;  143,  note. 
Kirchhoff,  G.,  his  work  in  chemistry,  i, 

407. 
Kirchmaier,  his  scepticism  regarding  the 

phoenix  and  the  basilisk,  i,  39.    Cited, 

40,  note. 
Kirsch,  A.   M.,    cited,  i,  86,  note  ;  162, 

note. 
Kite,  reason  for  its  creation,  i,  42. 
Kladderadatsch,  cited,  i,  411,  note. 
Knak,   Pastor,  his  denunciation   of  the 

Copernican  theory,  i,  150,  411. 
Kneipp,  Father,  cure  of  a  possessed  boy 

at  his   hydropathic   establishment,  ii, 

128. 
Knight's  Dictionary  cf  Mechanics,  cited, 

i,  95,  note. 
Knives  of  stone,  origin  of  their  use  in  the 

sacred  rites    of  Egypt  and   Judea,  i, 

300. 
Knollys,  his  translation  of  a  passage  from 

Sleidan  on  the  consecration  of  bells,  i, 

346- 
Knox,  John,  his  views  on  comets,  i,  180. 

Cited,  181,  note. 
Koch,  his  researches  in  bacteriology,  ii, 

65- 
Kohl,  cited,  i,  no,  note. 
Kohut,  cited,  ii,  379,  note. 
Koken,  his  sermon   on  weather,  i,  364. 

Cited,  365,  note. 
Konigstein,  legend  of  a  boulder  near  the, 

ii,  216. 
Kopp,  cited,  i,  378,  note  ;  391,  note  ;  392, 

note  ;  399,  note  ;  ii,  35,  note. 
Koran,  its  influence  on  scientific  thought, 

i,  212.     Mystical   interpretation  of,  ii, 

293- 
Korte,  of  Altona,  on   the  fossils   of  the 

Dead  Sea,  ii,  247. 
Kosseir,  Desert  of,  a  legend  of  the,  ii, 

209,  210,  225. 
Kotelmann,  cited,  ii,  40,  note  ;  45,  note. 
Krafft,  cited,  ii,  117,  note. 
Krafft-Ebing,   cited,   ii,    99,   note  ;    103, 

note  ;  106,  note  ;   166,  note. 
Kranzel,  John,  his   attitude   toward   the 

story  of  Lot's  wife's  statue,  ii,  255,  256. 

Cited,  257,  note. 
Kretschmer,  cited,  i,  91,  note  ;  93,  note  ; 

Q5,  note  ;    98,  note ;    105,  note  ;    106, 

note  ;  107,  note  ;  376.  note. 
Kriegk,  cited,  ii,  106,  note. 
Kruse,  cited,  ii,  254,  note. 
Kuenen,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 


328,330,331.  On  the  work  of  Colen- 
^  so,  352.     Cited,  353,  note  ;  391,  note. 

Kugler,  cited,  ii,  231,  note. 

Kuhn,  cited,  ii,  384,  note. 

Kuncewicz,  John,  canonization  of,  as  St. 
Josafat,  i,  385,  note. 

Kurtz,  on  the  origin  of  geological  dis- 
turbances, i,  242. 

L.,  J.  C.  W.,  his  Astronomische  Unter- 
redung,  i,  150,  151.     Cited,  151,  note. 

Laborde,  Abbe,  his  opposition  to  the 
practice  of  loaning  at  interest,  ii,  2S3. 

Laboulaye,  on  the  source  of  the  legend 
of  St.  Josaphat,  ii,  383. 

La  Brocquiere,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Lacroix,  P.  (pseud.  Jacob),  cited,  ii,  42, 
note  ;  98,  note  ;  125,  note. 

Lactantius,  his  subordination  of  science 
to  theology,  i,  25.  His  belief  in  the 
futility  of  scientific  studies,  32.  On 
astronomy,  92.  His  rejection  of  the 
theory  of  the  earth's  sphericity,  97. 
On  the  antipodes,  103.  Result  of  his 
attempt  to  deaden  scientific  thought, 
icg,  209.  His  views  regarding  the 
heavenly  vault,  202.  His  views  on  the 
antiquity  of  man,  250.  His  condem- 
nation of  scientific  study,  375,  395. 
On  the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  266. 
Cited,  i,  28,  note  ;  93,  note ;  105, 
note  ;  376,  note  ;  ii,  98,  note  ;  266,  note. 

Ladd,  cited,  ii,  296,  note. 

Lafitau,  on  the  customs  of  aborigines,  i, 
267.  His  work  in  comparative  eth- 
nology, 303. 

Laing,  Dr.,  his  attack  on  Darwinism,  i, 
73.     On  the  burial  place  of  Darwin, 

S3- 

Laing,  S.,  cited,  i,  49,  note  ;  88,  note  ; 
265,  note  ;  2S0,  note  ;  281,  note  ;  283, 
note  ;  ii,  379,  note  ;  390,  note. 

Lake-dwellers,  remains  of,  found  in 
Switzerland,  i,  294,  295.  Lake-dwell- 
ers of  the  present  day,  295. 

Lalande,  his  endeavours  to  have  Galileo's 
works  removed  from  the  Index,  i,  155. 
His  verification  of  the  new  cometary 
theory,  204. 

La  Madeleine,  discovery  of  prehistoric 
carvings  at,  i,  274. 

Lama,  Grand,  similarity  of,  to  the  Pope, 
ii,  3S0. 

Lamaism,  similarity  of,  to  Catholicism, 
ii,  3S0. 

Lamarck,  on  the  development  of  species, 
i,  63. 

Lamennais,  his  attack  on  the  new  phi- 
lology, ii,  199.  His  desertion  to  the 
scientific  side,  200.     Cited,  200,  note. 

Lammert,  cited,  ii,  39,  note  ;  45,  note. 


INDEX. 


437 


Lanfranc,  Archbishop,  his  correction  of 
the  Bible  text,  ii,  304. 

Lang,  Andrew,  cited,  i,  go,  note  ;  373, 
note  ;  ii,  166,  note  ;  218,  note. 

Lange,  cited,  i,  19,  note  ;  44,  note  ;  123, 
note ;  127,  note ;  153,  note ;  402, 
note. 

Langegg,  cited,  ii,  223,  note. 

Langin,  cited,  ii,  78,  note;  126,  note; 
127,  note  ;  143,  note. 

Langlois,  cited,  ii,  in,  note. 

Language,  its  evidence  regarding  the  an- 
tiquity of  man  in  Egypt,  i,  262.  Sacred 
theory  of,  in  its  first  form,  168-179.  In 
its  second  form,  179-188.  Breaking 
down  of  the  theological  view  of,  189- 
193.  Study  of,  in  the  Church,  189. 
European  languages,  their  dissimilarity 
to  Hebrew,  190.  Semitic,  limits  of, 
pointed  out  by  Hervas,  191.  Evolu- 
tion of,  206.  McClintock's  article  on, 
in  the  Biblical  Cyclopedia,  206.  View 
of  modern  theologians  on  the  origin 
of,  207. 

Lao-tse,  supernatural  announcement  of 
his  birth,  i,  172. 

La  Peyrere,  his  Pre-Adamite  theory,  i, 
255.  Persecution  of,  for  his  work  in 
biblical  criticism,  ii,  317.  Cited,  321, 
note. 

Lapide,  Cornelius  a,  on  the  creation,  i, 
56.     Cited,  56,  note  ;  ii,  234,  note. 

Laplace,  his  development  of  the  nebular 
hypothesis,  i,  17.  His  difficulties,  22. 
His  speculation  regarding  the  creation, 
242.     Cited,  130,  note. 

La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,  his  advo- 
cacy of  reform  in  the  treatment  of  the 
insane,  ii,  130. 

Lartet,  E.,  his  excavations  at  the  Grotto 
of  Aurignac,  i,  273.     At  Eyzies,  274. 

Lartet,  L.,  his  report  on  the  geology  of 
the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  253,  254.  Cited,  i, 
302,  note;  ii,  222,  note;  241,  note; 
248,  note  ;  255,  note. 

La  Salette,  Our  Lady  of,  miraculous 
cures  wrought  by,  ii,  24.  Miracles  at 
the  fountain  of,  21,  note.  Loss  of 
prestige  of  the  healing  miracles  at,  42. 
Judicial  investigation  of  miracles  at, 
43- 

Lash  for  whipping  those  who  broke  the 

Jewish  law,  its  construction,  ii,  292. 
Lassen,  his  work  in  philology,  ii,  379. 
Lateau,  Louise,  hallucinations  of,  ii,  120. 
Lateran,  great  bell  of  the,  baptized  by 

Pope  John,  i,  345. 
Lateran     Council,     Third,     its     decree 

against  money-lenders,  ii,  267. 
Lateran  Council,  Fourth,  its  declaration 
regarding  the  creation,  i,  5.     Its  inter- 


diction of  surgery  to  the  clergy,  ii,  36. 
Its    regulation    regarding    physicians, 
37- 
Latham,  Baldwin,  cited,  i,  392,  note. 

Latimer,  Bishop,  on  heavenly  portents, 
i,  179.     Cited,  179,  note. 

Latin,    ability   of  possessed    persons    to 

speak,  ii,  159,  161. 
La  Trappe,  system  of,  established  in  the 
monastery  of  Lerins,  i,  370. 

Laubardemont,  his  investigation  of  the 
case  of  Grandier,  ii,  144. 

Laud,  Archbishop,  his  absence  of  super- 
stition regarding  comets,  i,  1S0. 

de  Lauda,  his  sentence  against  Galileo, 
i.  137- 

Laurent,  cited,  ii,  139,  note. 

Lausanne,  Bishop  of,  exorcism  of  eels  by, 
ii,  113. 

Lava  from  extinct  volcanoes,  explanation 
of,  i,  241. 

Lavater,  on  comets,  i,  183.   . 

Lavoisier,  his  discoveries  in  chemistry,  i, 
405.     His  death,  405. 

Law,  interdiction  of  the  study  of,  ii,  36. 

Law,  Jewish,  its  translation  into  Greek 
accompanied  by  three  days'  darkness 
over  the  earth,  i,  173.  Rabbinical 
declaration  regarding,  ii,  292.  Date 
of  its  establishment,  330. 

Laws  of  development  of  sacred  litera- 
ture, ii,  238-293. 

Lawson,  Deodat,  cited,  i,  363,  note. 

Layard,  his  work  in  Assyriology,  i,  2,  51. 
His  discoveries  in  Assyria,  ii,  370. 

Laynez,  friend  of  Xavier,  ii,  13. 

Lea,  H.  C,  cited,  i,  392,  note ;  ii,  73, 
note  ;  75,  note  ;  272,  note  ;  2S5,  note. 

Leake,  cited,  ii,  211,  note. 

Lealus,  his  teachings  regarding  meteoro- 
logical phenomena,  i,  349. 

Learning,  revival  of,  its  influence  on  the 
witch  persecution,  ii,  122.  On  the 
study  of  Hebrew,  179.  On  literary 
criticism,  314. 

Lebanon,  fossils  found  in  the  region  of, 
ii,  246. 

Leblois,  cited,  i,  257,  note. 

Le  Brigant,  on  Breton  as  the  primitive 
tongue,  ii,  191.     Cited  ii,  192,  note. 

Lecazre,  Father,  on  the  effects  of  Gali- 
leo's doctrines,  i,  134.  On  the  author- 
itative nature  of  Galileo's  condemna- 
tion, 164. 

Lecky,  cited,  i,  105,  note  ;  136,  note  ; 
140,  note  ;  150,  note;  174,  note;  183, 
note  ;  200,  note  ;  224,  note  ;  355,  note  ; 
363,  note  ;  364,  note  ;  ii,  3,  note  ;  45, 
note ;  49,  note  ;  58,  note  ;  66,  note  ; 
84,  note  ;  109,  note  ;  241,  note  ;  265, 
note ;    271,    note  ;    277,    note ;    279, 


433 


INDEX. 


note  ;  2S3,  note  ;  2S6,  note  ;  321, 
note  ;  332,  note;  341,  note. 

Lecky,  Mrs.,  cited,  ii,  71,  note  ;  104, 
note. 

Le  Clerc  (Clericus),  on  the  story  of  the 
transformation  of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  242, 
256.  His  criticism  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, 320.  Theological  attacks  on, 
321.  On  Christ's  mission,  391.  Cited, 
243,  note  ;  321,  note. 

Le  Conte,  Duffield's  condemnation  of,  i, 

79- 
Lectionary  of  the  Anglican   Church,  its 

retention  of  the  passage  in   St.   John 

regarding   the   "three   witnesses,"    ii, 

305- 

Ledieu,  cited,  i,  291,  note. 

Lee,  Archbishop  of  York,  his  attack  on 
Erasmus,  ii,  304. 

Lee,  F.  G.,  on  Darwinism,  i,  83.  Cited, 
87,  note. 

Leeuwenhoek,  his  researches  in  bacteri- 
ology, ii,  65. 

Legends,  in  Mosaic  account  of  the  crea- 
tion, i,  20.  Their  source,  50.  Em- 
bodiment of  ideas  of  demoniacal  pos- 
session in  popular,  ii,  11  r.  Necessity 
of,  in  early  times,  208,  263.  Mediaeval 
growth  of  those  of  the  Dead  Sea,  221- 
235.  Evolution  of  our  sacred  books 
from,  288.     Growth  of  secondary,  2S9. 

Leghorn,  sanitary  condition  of,  ii,  81. 

Leibnitz,  on  the  immutability  of  species, 
i,  58.  His  attack  on  the  Newtonian 
theory,  149.  His  attack  on  the  theo- 
logical view  of  language,  ii,  190,  191. 
Victory  of,  in  the  controversy  over  in- 
terest-taking, 277.     Cited,  192,  note. 

Leidy,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  70. 

Leith,  burning  of  witches  at,  i,  361. 

Lelewel,  cited,  i,  102,  note. 

Le'lut,  cited,  ii,  101,  note. 

Le  Mans,  Council  of,  surgery  forbidden 
to  monks  by,  ii,  31. 

Lemons  from  the  Dead  Sea,  Seetzen's 
examination  of,  ii,  248,  249. 

L'Empereur,  Dr.  Constantine,  on  the 
purity  and  divine  origin  of  Hebrew,  ii, 
183.     Cited,  187,  note. 

Lenormant,  his  investigation  of  Chal- 
dean legends  of  creation,  i,  238.  Of 
the  prehistoric  remains  of  Egypt,  298. 
His  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii,  363. 
Cited,  i,  25,  note  ;  90,  note  ;  117, 
note  ;  238,  note  ;  265,  note  ;  287, 
note;  373,  note;  374,  note;  ii,  173, 
note  ;  223,  note  ;  226,  note  ;  371, 
note  ;  374,  note  ;  377,  note  ;  394, 
note. 

Lenses,  Roger  Bacon's  invention  of,  i, 
387. 


Leo  the  Great,  Pope,  his  condemnation 
of  the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  266.  Cited, 
266,  note. 

Leo  IV,  Pope,  his  destruction  of  a  basi- 
lisk, i,  38. 

Leo  X,  Pope,  fetich  given  by,  ii,  30.  His 
decree  against  the  taking  of  interest, 
271. 

Leo  XIII,  Pope,  his  liberal  attitude,  i, 
169.  His  advice  to  the  monks  of  Le- 
rins,  371.  His  conduct  during  the 
cholera  plague  in  Naples,  ii,  81.  His 
approval  of  Haussman  de  Wandel- 
burg's  book,  262.  His  encyclical  on 
biblical  study,  364-366. 

Leon,  Luis  de,  persecution  of,  for  writ- 
ing a  commentary  on  Solomon's  Song, 
ii.  325- 

Leopardi,  cited,  i,  91,  note  ;  100,  note  ; 
115,  note  ;  178,  note  ;  228,  note. 

Leopold  de'  Medici,  bribery  of,  by  the 
Pope,  i,  41.  President  of  the  Acca- 
demia  del  Cimento,  393. 

Leotardi,  Onorato,  his  treatise  on  usury, 
ii,  279.     Cited,  282,  note. 

Lepaute,  Mme.,  her  verification  of  the 
new  cometary  theory,  i,  204. 

L'Epinois,  his  publication  of  the  trial  of 
Galileo,  i,  131,  163.  Cited,  123,  note  ; 
132,  note  ;  142,  note  ;  147,  note  ;  1C0, 
note  ;  170,  note. 

Lepsius,  his  drawings  representing  early 
Egyptian  figures,  i,  259.  His  opposi- 
tion to  the  idea  of  an  early  Stone  age 
in  Egypt,  297.  Cited,  90,  note  ;  264, 
note  ;  265,  note  ;  ii,  376,  note ;  377, 
note. 

Lerida,  University  of,  privilege  of  dis- 
section granted  to,  ii,  50. 

Lerins,  monastery  of,  its  sanctity  and 
history,  i,  369-371.  Protection  of  its 
church  tower  by  a  lightning-rod,  371. 

Leroy-Beaulieu,  cited,  ii,  310,  note. 

Lessing,  his  philosophy  of  history,  i,  28S. 
The  period  of,  ii,  192.  Influence  of 
Spinoza  on,  316. 

Le  Tellier,  his  assistance  in  suppressing 
Simon's  works,  ii,  320. 

Lethaby,  cited,  i,  90,  note  ;  99,  note  ; 
117,  note. 

Letronne,  cited,  i,  105,  note. 

Letters,  theories  as  to  the  origin  of,  ii, 
197,  ^204. 

Levi,  Eliphas,  cited,  i,  381,  note  ;  408, 
note. 

Leviathan,  Kirchmaier  on,  i,  40.  Earth- 
quakes and  tides  caused  by,  327. 

Leviticus,  from,  to  political  economy,  ii, 
264-287.     Cited,  265,  note. 

Levy,  M.,  his  labours  in  hygienic  re- 
search, ii,  93.     Cited,  i,  392,  note. 


INDEX. 


439 


Lewes,  his  scientific  activity,  i,  6S.  Cited, 

ii,  55,  note  ;  21S,  note. 
Lewis,  Sir  G.  C,  cited,  i,  91,  note  ;  116, 

note;  122,  note. 
Lewis,  T.,  on  evolution  and  the  Bible,  i, 

81. 
Libri,  cited,  i,  132,  note  ;  135,  note  ;  153, 

note. 
Libyans,  types  of,    sculptured    on  early 

Egyptian  monuments,  i,  259. 
Lice,  reason  for  the  creation  of,  i,  43. 
Liddon,  Canon,  on  the  inerrancy  of  the 

Bible,  ii,  369.   Cited,  i,  87,  note  ;  ii,  334, 

note  ;  341,  note. 
Liebrecht,  on  the  source  of  the  legend  of 

St.  Josaphat,  ii,  3S3. 
Liege,  procession  at,  in  order  to  bring 

rain,  i,  344. 
Liegeois,  cited,  ii,  66,  note  ;  268,  note  ; 

269,  note  ;  271,  note. 
Life,  human,  average  length  of,  in  France, 

ii.  93- 

Light,  belief  that  it  is  an  entity  inde- 
pendent of  the  heavenly  bodies,  i,  12, 
50.  The  instrument  of  all  subsequent 
creation,  56. 

Lightfoot,  Dr.  John,  his  sacred  chro- 
nology, i,  9.  His  attempt  to  reconcile 
the  two  accounts  of  Genesis,  27.  On 
the  date  of  creation,  253,  256.  On  the 
antiquity  and  sanctity  of  Hebrew,  ii, 
183.  Cited,  i,  10,  note  ;  28,  note  ;  256, 
note  ;  ii,  1S7,  note. 

Lightning,  Pythagorean  statement  re- 
garding, i,  323.  Mediaeval  beliefs  re- 
garding, 338.    Early  theory  of,  ii,  169. 

Lightning-rod,  Franklin's,  i,  364-372. 
Earthquake  of  1755  ascribed  to,  366. 
Opposition  to,  366-368. 

Liguori,  Alphonso,  his  reasoning  regard- 
ing the  lawfulness  of  taking  interest, 
ii,  280,  281.     Cited,  282,  note. 

Lillie,  cited,  ii,  384,  note. 

Lima,  Second  Council  of,  its  decree  re- 
garding cocaine,  ii,  61. 

Linant,  his  discovery  of  prehistoric  re- 
mains in  Egypt,  i,  298. 

Lincoln,  Morrill  Bill  signed  by,  i,  413. 

Linden,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Lindsay,  cited,  ii,  2S6,  note. 

Lingard,  cited,  ii,  84,  note. 

Linnaeus,  on  the  origin  of  species,  i,  47. 
His  opposition  to  evolution,  59  Modi- 
fication of  his  views,  60.  Hostility  to, 
60.     Cited,  49,  note  ;   16S,  note. 

Lion,  sacro-scientific  ideas  regarding  the, 
i>  33.  4°-  Distribution  of,  over  the 
earth,  46,  47. 

Lippert,  cited,  i,  399,  note. 

Lister,  his  researches  in  bacteriology,  ii, 
65. 


Literature,  comparative,  evidence  of 
man's  upward  tendency  furnished  by, 
i,  308.      Its  solution  of  vital  problems, 

ii.  393- 

Literature,  sacred.    See  Books,  Sacred. 

Littera  annua,  Jesuit,  cited,  i,  343,  note  ; 
354,  note  ;  ii,  117,  note. 

Littre,  cited,  ii,  25,  note;  42,  note;  53, 
note  ;  55,  note  ;  74,  note  ;  78,  note. 

Liver,  its  function,  ii,  3S.  Mediaeval 
medicine  for,  38. 

Liverwort,  its  medicinal  properties,  ii, 
33. 

Lives  of  the  Saints,  cited,  ii,  7r,  note. 

Llama,  its  domestication  a  proof  of  man's 
unassisted  development,  i,  305. 

Lloyd,  Prof.,  hostility  to  his  translation 
of  Eichhorn's  work,  ii,  323. 

Loan  and  trust  companies,  sinfulness  of, 
ii,  264. 

Loans  at  interest,  origin  and  progress  of 
hostility  to,  ii,  264-275. 

Locatelli,  his  handbook  of  exorcisms 
against  storms,  i,  341. 

Locke,  John,  his  opposition  to  the  theory 
of  demoniacal  possession,  ii,  125. 

Lockyer,  on  the  date  of  Mena's  reign,  i, 
259.  On  the  early  Egyptian  knowl- 
edge of  astronomy,  261.  Cited,  19, 
note  ;  265,  note. 

Loescher,  Prof.,  on  the  scientific  theory 
of  gases,  i,  404. 

Loisy,  Abbe,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  363. 

Lombard  code,  its  enactments  regarding 
insanity,  ii,  103. 

London,  International  Exhibition  at, 
origin  of  movement  in  favour  of  sci- 
entific education  at,  i,  413.  Great 
plague  of,  ii,  83.  Ravages  of  fever  in, 
91.  Death  rate  in,  91.  Law  against 
the  taking  of  interest  enacted  by  the 
authorities  of,  268. 

London  Times,  on  Darwinism,  i,  76. 
Cited,  ii,  95,  note. 

Longley,  Archbishop  of  York,  his  pro- 
test  against  Essays  and  Reviews,  ii, 

343- 

Loos,  Cornelius,  his  book  against  witch- 
persecution,  i,  356,  and  note.  Punish- 
ment of,  362,  391  ;  ii,  119. 

Lord's  Prayer,  polyglot  versions  of,  their 
use  in  comparative  philology,  ii,  191. 

Loring,  Israel,  cited,  i,  207,  note. 

Lorini,  his  attack  on  Galileo,  i,  134. 

Loriquet,  cited,  i,  322,  note. 

Lorry,  on  the  epidemic  of  hysteria  in 
Paris,  ii,  155. 

Lortet,  cited,  ii,  222,  note. 

Lot,  the  saving  of.  ii,  224. 

Lot's  wife,  legend  of,  ii,  20S,  225-2^3. 


440 


INDEX. 


Awe  inspired  by  the  pillar  of  salt  that 
was  once  Lot's  wife,  216.  Universal 
acceptance  of,  226,  227.  Seen  by  trav- 
ellers, 228-235.  Theories  as  to  her 
movement,  233,  234.  As  to  the  pres- 
ence of  her  soul,  234.  Identification 
of  the  position  of  her  statue,  i,  38  ;  ii, 
240.  Her  sin,  244.  Disregard  by  the- 
ologians of  the  story  of,  260. 

Loudun,  epidemic  of  diabolic  possession 
in  the  Ursuline  convent  at,  ii,  143-145. 

Louis  IX,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  42. 
His  laws  against  usury,  279. 

Louis  XIV,  cure  of  king's  evil  by,  ii,  48. 
Contrast  between  Napoleon  III  and, 
93,  94.  One  result  of  his  oppression 
of  the  Huguenots,  145.  His  care  for 
orthodoxy,  186. 

Louis  XV,  contrast  between  Napoleon 
III  and,  ii,  94. 

Louis  XVIII,  sponsor  at  the  baptism  of 
bells  in  the  Cathedral  of  Versailles,  i, 
346. 

Lourdes,  Our  Lady  of,  miraculous  cures 
wrought  by,  ii,  24.  Their  fashionable- 
ness,  42. 

Louvain,  University  of,  its  attitude  to- 
ward the  Copernican  theory,  i,  128. 
Toward  the  discovery  of  the  sun's 
spots,  133. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  cited,  i,  118,  note. 

Lovvenstein,  cited,  ii,  235,  note. 

Lowth,  Bishop,  his  work  on  Hebrew 
poetry,  ii,  322. 

Loyolo,  Ignatius,  his  influence  on  Xavier, 

ii,  5- 

Lubbock,  Sir  John,  scientific  activity  of, 
i,  68.  His  works  on  comparative 
ethnology,  305.  On  spiritual  evolu- 
tion of  man,  312.  Cited,  269,  note  ; 
275,  note  ;  2S9,  note  ;  291,  note  ;  309, 
note. 

Lubienitzky,  his  views  regarding  comets, 
i,  198.     Cited,  199,  note. 

Liibke,  on  Egyptian  sculpture,  i,  260. 
Cited,  265,  note. 

Lucifer,  mediaeval  belief  regarding,  i, 
1 19.     His  destruction  of  the  earth,  242. 

Lucin  Lake,  origin  of,  ii,  214. 

Lucretius,  his  theory  of  evolution,  i,  14. 
His  opposition  to  the  theory  of  the  an- 
tipodes, 102.  His  view  of  the  de- 
velopment of  man,  286,  287,  288.  His 
attempt  to  explain  storms,  323.  His 
discussion  of  the  plague  of  Athens,  ii, 
67.  On  the  origin  of  language,  174, 
^Sj  i95-  Cited,  i,  19,  note  ;  287, 
note  ;  ii,  68,  note  ;  176,  note. 

Lucrum  cessans,  doctrine  of,  an  evasion 
of  the  laws  against  taking  interest,  ii, 
272,  281. 


Luden,  cited,  i,  360,  note. 

Luftkandl,  cited,  i,  322,  note. 

Lugano,  power  over  demons  possessed 
by  a  bell  at,  i,  345. 

Lukas,  Franz,  cited,  i,  3,  note  ;  13,  note  ; 
53,  note;  54,  note;  90,  note;  117, 
note.    • 

Luke,  Gospel  of,  reference  to  the  story 
of  Lot's  wife  in,  ii,  226.  Its  condem- 
nation of  usury,  265.  Cited,  101, 
note  ;  226,  note  ;  265,  note. 

Lukins,  George,  the  casting  out  of  seven 
devils  from,  ii,  165. 

Lully,  Raymond,  influence  of  mystic 
theology  on,  i,  397.  His  devotion  to 
science,  ii,  35. 

Lumen  A7aturte,  cited,  i,  36,  note. 

Lunacy,  theological  ideas  of,  and  its 
treatment,  ii,  97-116. 

Lunatics,  severe  treatment  of,  ii,  103, 
105,  109,  129.  Lack  of  care  for,  105. 
The  scourging  of,  no,  129.  Indiffer- 
ence to  the  sufferings  of,  112. 

Lund,  his  explorations  in  the  caverns  of 
Brazil,  i,  271. 

Lungs,  their  use  to  fan  the  heart,  ii,  38. 

Luthardt,  on  evolution,  i,  81.  Cited,  77, 
note. 

Luther,  his  belief  regarding  the  creation, 
i,  8,  30.  His  literal  acceptance  of  the 
Scriptures,  26.  On  superfluous  ani- 
mals, 30.  His  employment  of  the  nat- 
ural sciences,  37.  His  belief  regard- 
ing the  shape  of  the  earth,  97, 98.  His 
condemnation  of  Copernicus,  126,  212. 
On  comets,  182.  His  willingness  to 
accept  compromise  with  the  scientific 
view,  204.  His  views  on  fossils,  226. 
On  the  antiquity  of  the  world,  253. 
On  the  fall  of  man,  288.  Thunder- 
bolt employed  to  warn,  333.  On  the 
diabolical  origin  of  storms,  339,  348. 
On  the  exorcism  of  storms,  341.  His 
anecdote  regarding  the  christening  of 
a  bell,  346.  His  belief  in  alchemy, 
398.  Recovery  of  Melanchthon  at  the 
sight  of,  ii,  7.  On  the  cause  of  dis- 
eases, 45.  On  the  use  of  physic,  46. 
His  belief  in  diabolic  influences,  1 14, 
115,  116.  Influence  of  his  translation 
of  the  Bible  on  the  belief  in  diabolic 
activity,  115.  On  the  language  used 
by  God,  180.  Influence  of  his  picto- 
rial Bible,  236.  His  belief  regarding 
Lot's  wife,  244.  On  the  taking  of  in- 
terest, 272.  His  rejection  of  the  text 
from  St.  John  regarding  the  "  three 
witnesses,"  304.  His  attitude  toward 
verbal  inspiration,  305.  His  explana- 
tion of  the  allegorical  meaning  of  mon- 
sters found  near  Rome  and  Freiburg, 


INDEX. 


441 


306,  307.  His  interpretation  of  Solo- 
mon's Song,  326.  Cited,  i,  10,  note  ; 
28,  note;  31,  note;  127,  note;  226, 
note ;  287,  note  ;  339,  note  ;  ii,  46, 
note  ;  98,  note  ;  115,  note  ;  126,  note  ; 
273,  note  ;  308,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Luther's  Bible,  cited,  ii,  237,  note. 

Lutheran  Church,  the  results  of  its  dog- 
matic interpretation   of   the    Bible,   i, 

239- 

Lutheran  clergy,  their  treatises  against 
the  Copernican  system,  i,  155. 

Lutheran  Quarterly,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Lutheran  ism,  American,  its  attack  on 
modern  astronomy,  i,  150,  151. 

Luxman,  legend  of,  ii,  215. 

Lux  Mundi,  significance  of  the  publica- 
tion of  these  essays,  i,  24 ;  ii,  359. 
Cited,  359,  note. 

Luxor,  explorations  at,  i,  279. 

Luxury,  promotion  of,  by  the  hostility  of 
the  Church  to  money-lending,  ii,  270. 

Luynes,  Due  de,  his  investigation  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  253.  Cited,  222,  note  ; 
223,  note  ;  255,  note. 

Lycabettus,  legend  of  the  rock  of,  ii, 
210. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  his  work,  i,  64.  His 
acceptance  of  evolutionary  doctrines, 
74.  Theological  attacks  upon  his  sys- 
tem of  geology,  232,  233.  Retraction 
of  his  earlier  views,  241,  275.  Dean 
Stanley's  sermon  on  him,  247.  His 
early  views  of  scientific  research,  271. 
His  investigation  of  Boucher  de 
Perthes's  discoveries,  273.  Effect  of 
his  studies  on  the  Bible,  ii,  208.  Cited, 
i,  10,  note  ;  155,  note;  210,  note  ;  212, 
note;  215,  note  ;  217,  note  ;  223,  note  ; 
228,  note  ;  230,  note  ;  269,  note  ;  281, 
note  ;  309,  note  ;  ii,  225,  note. 

Lynch,  Commander,  his  observation  of 
the  pillar  of  salt  by  the  Dead  Sea,  ii, 
232,  262,  263.  His  exploration  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  250-252,  254.  Cited,  222, 
note  ;  254,  note. 

Lyons,  epidemic  of  hysteria  in,  ii,  158. 
Council  of,  its  decree  against  money- 
lenders, 267. 

Macalyane,    Eufame,    execution    of,    for 

seeking  relief  from  pain  in  childbirth, 

ii,  62. 
Macarius,   Archbishop,  on  the    Creation 

and  the  Deluge,  i,  236. 
Macaulay,  cited,  ii,  18S,  note  ;  341,  note 
Mackenzie,  Harriet,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 
McClintock,  his  acceptance  of  the  local 

character  of  the   Deluge,  i.  235.      His 
•     acceptance   of  the   new   philology,  ii, 

206. 


McClintock  and  Strong's  Cyclopadia  of 
Biblical  Theology,  cited,  i,  230,  note  ; 
235,  note  ;   ii,  207,  note. 

McCosh,  on  evolution,  i,  80.  On  the 
effect  of  theological  opposition  to  sci- 
ence, 320.  1 1  is  attitude  toward  science, 
412,  note      (  ited,  eg,  note. 

McEnery,  the  Rev.  Mr.,  concealment  of 
his  discoveries  in  Kent's  Cavern,  i, 
269. 

McKinney,  W.  A.,  cited,  ii,  219,  note. 

NfcMaster,  cited,  ii,  58,  note. 

Macmillaris  Magazine,  cited,  ii,  354, 
note. 

MacNeile,  Canon,  on  the  verbal  inspira- 
tion of  the  Old   Testament,  ii,  369. 

McSweeney,  E.  F.  X.,  cited,  i,  86,  note. 

McTyeire,  Bishop,  on  Prof.  Winchell's 
unorthodox  views,  i,  314. 

McWhorter,  Alexander,  cited,  ii,  219, 
note. 

Madden,  cited,  ii,  143,  note  ;  156,  note. 

Madeira,  variety  of  shells  found  in,  i, 
48. 

Madler,  cited,  i,  126,  note;  127,  note; 
129,  note  ;  140,  note  ;  183,  note  ;  184, 
note ;  200,  note  ;  201,  note  ;  204,  note  ; 
206,  note  ;  322,  note. 

Madmen,  indifference  toward,  ii,  129. 
See  also  Lunatics. 

Madness,  theological  theory  of,  ii,  99- 
101.     See  also  Insanity,  Lunacy. 

Madox,  Bishop,  his  defence  of  inocula- 
tion, ii,  56. 

Madrid,  departure  of  witches  from,  ii,  76. 

Maes,  Andreas,  on  the  authorship  of  the 
Pentateuch,  ii,  313.  Placing  of  his 
book  on  the  Index,  314. 

Maestlin,  Michael,  his  observations  and 
conclusions  regarding  the  comet  of 
1577,  i,  184,  1S5.     Cited,  185,  note. 

Maffci,  F.  S.,  his  attack  on  the  theo- 
logical views  of  usury,  ii,  281.  Dedi- 
cation of  his  work  to  the  Pope,  283. 

Maffci.  G.  P.,  his  history  of  India,  ii,  14. 
Cited,  21,  note. 

Magdeburg,  the  recognised  capital  of  or- 
thodox Lutheranism,  i,  190. 

Magellan,  effect  of  his  voyages,  i,  45. 
Influence  of  his  voyages  on  the  doc- 
trine of  the  antipodes,  109.  Influence 
of  the  religious  spirit  on,  113.  Influ- 
ence of  his  voyages,  ii,  238,  271. 

Magi  of  Egypt,  their  discovery  of  the 
star  announcing  Moses's  birth,  i,  172. 

Magic,  from,  to  chemistry  and  physics, 
i,  373-415.  Its  prevalence  among  bar- 
barians, 373.  Two  kinds  of,  white 
and  black,  381,  382.  Severity  of  the 
Church  against,  3S3.  Fear  of,  3S3. 
Disappearance  of,  406. 


442 


INDEX. 


Magicians,  fear  of,  i,  381.  Greek  and 
Roman  laws  against,  3S2.  Ennius's 
ridicule  of,  382.  Pliny  on,  382.  As 
agents  of  the  gods  of  the  heathen,  3S3. 
Effect  of  the  persecution  of,  on  science, 

3S5- 

Magius,  cited,  i,  347,  note. 

Magog,  terror  inspired  by,  i,  101. 

Mahaffy,  J.  P.,  cited,  ii,  211,  note  ;  377, 
note. 

Mahudel,  on  thunder-stones,  i,  268. 

Maillet,  B.  de,  on  evolution,  i,  58,  59. 
Value  of  his  work,  59.    Cited,  62,  note. 

Maimonides,  Rabbi  Moses,  his  biblical 
chronology,  i,  252. 

Maistre,  Joseph  de,  his  belief  regarding 
comets,  i,  205.  His  attack  on  com- 
parative ethnology,  304.  On  science, 
40S.  His  attack  on  the  new  philology, 
ii,  199.     Cited,  200,  note. 

Maitland,  his  encouragement  of  the  use 
of  inoculation  against  smallpox,  ii,  55. 

Majoli,  on  thunder  and  lightning,  i,  333. 
Cited,  334,  note. 

Maksi,  the  soldiers  of  the  early  Egyptian 
army,  i,  260. 

Malay  Archipelago,  Wallace's  work  in 
the,  i,  67. 

Malebranche,  his  opposition  to  the  witch 
superstition,  ii,  123. 

Malleus  Maleficariim,  its  influence  in 
developing  storm-superstitions,  i,  352. 
Date  of  its  publication,  352,  note.  Its 
influence  on  the  witch  persecution, 
385.  Its  teachings  regarding  the  cause 
of  diabolic  possession,  ii,  118.  Cited, 
i,  352,  note  ;  ii,  75,  note. 

Malthus,  his  influence  on  the  doctrine 
of  evolution,  i,  68. 

Mamiani,  cited,  i,  no,  note. 

Mammoth,  Siberian,  at  St.  Petersburg, 
explanation  of,  i,  242.  Carvings  rep- 
resenting the,  274.  Remains  of,  found 
in  English  caves,  276.  The  hairy,  its 
remains  found  with  those  of  man,  277. 

Man,  date  of  his  creation,  i,  9.  Theo- 
logical teachings  regarding,  24-49. 
Representations  of  the  creation  of, 
24.  Origin  of  the  name,  25.  Differ- 
ence between  his  creation  and  that 
of  animals,  30,  46.  Antiquity  of,  249- 
265,  266-2S3.  "Fall"  of,  284-302, 
303-309,  310-322. 

Man,  Lake,  origin  of,  ii,  213. 

Manchester  Philological  Society,  Clarke's 
address  before,  ii,  198. 

Mandeville,  Sir  John,  representation  of 
the  production  of  beasts  and  birds  by,  i, 
37.  His  theory  as  to  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  99.  His  account  of  the  wonders 
of  the   Dead   Sea,   ii,   n,  note;  230. 


Cited,  i,  37,   note;  ii,   ir,  note;  213, 

note  ;  214,  note  ;  231,  note. 
Manetho,  his  history  of  Egypt,  i,  257,  258. 

His  list  of  great  personages  before  the 

first  dynasty,  262. 
Mangles,  his  investigation  of  the  Dead 

Sea  myths,  ii,  249. 
Mangnard,  A.,  cited,  i,  3ro,  note. 
Manichsean  struggle,  its  influence  on  the 

theory  of  disease,  ii,  27. 
Manning,  Cardinal,  on  evolution,  i,  71, 

72.     Cited,  73,  note. 
Mant,   Bishop,  his  attack  on   Milman's 

writings,  ii,  340. 
Manuale  Beiudictiomtm,  cited,   ii,   107, 

note. 
Manuscripts,  illuminated,  representations 

of  the  creation  in,  i,  24. 
Manz,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 
Manzoni,  portrayal   of  convent  life  by, 

ii,  143.    ^Esthetic  reaction  represented 

by,   334-     Cited,  74,   note  ;  78,  note ; 

121,  note. 
Maraldi,  his    exhibition    of  fossil    fishes 

found  in  the  Lebanon  region,  ii,  246. 
Marburg,  value  of  the  relics  at,  ii,  29. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  divine  interposition  in 

his   battle  against  the  Quadi,  i,  331. 

His  consultation  of  magicians,  382. 
Marduk,  the  Assyrian  creator,  i,  89. 
Margarita  Philoscphica,  the  encyclopae- 
dia of  Gregory    Reysch,    i,    109.     Its 

introduction  to  the  study  of  Hebrew, 

ii,  180. 
Marguerite,   St.,  sister   of  St.   Honorat, 

i,  369- 
Maria  Renata,  the  last  famous  victim  of 

the  witch  persecution  in  Germany,  ii, 

121.     Torture  and  execution  of,  156. 
Mariette,  date   assigned   by  him   to  the 

reign   of   Mena,    i,   258.     Cited,   264, 

note  ;  265,  note  ;  ii,  377,  note. 
Marin,  Simon,  the  burning  of,  because 

of  religious  hallucinations,  ii,  120. 
Marini,  his   attitude   toward   Galileo,  i, 

147,    and    note.     His    publication    of 

the    documents    relating    to    Galileo's 

trial,  161,  note  ;  162.     On  the  origin 

of  Hebrew,  ii,  177.    Cited,  i,  164,  note  ; 

ii,  182,  note. 
Mariott,  cited,  ii,  ill,  note. 
Mariti,    Abate,   his  book   on    the    Holy 

Land,  ii,  246.     His  service  to  science, 

263.     Cited,  248,  note. 
Mark,    Gospel  of,    rejection    of  the  last 

twelve  verses  of,  by  the  revisers,  ii,  387. 
Markham,  Archbishop  of  York,  his  fail- 
ure to  assist  Tuke's  reforms,  ii,  133. 
Mars,  its  place  in  the  spheres,  i,  118. 
Marseilles,  the  plague  in,  ii,  86.     Care 

for  the  insane  at,  105. 


INDEX. 


443 


Marsh,  O.  S.,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  70. 
His  series  of  specimens  showing  the 
evolution  of  the  horse,  78,  79,  Si. 
Cited,  228,  note:  241,  note. 

Marsham,  Sir  John,  on  Egyptian  chro- 
nology, i,  255.     Cited,  257,  note. 

Martianus  Capella,  his  suggestion  of  a 
heliocentric  theory,  i,  121. 

Martin,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  41,44. 
Intercession  of,  in  behalf  of  Naples, 
78. 

Martin,  Henri,  cited,  i,  no,  note  ;  155, 
note;  392,  note;  ii,  88,  note;  156, 
note. 

Martin,  T.,  cited,  i,  132,  note  ;  135, 
note.;  143,  note  ;  147,  note  ;  157,  note; 
163,  note  ;  164,  note  ;  165,  note  ;  167, 
note. 

Martindale,  cited,  ii,  62,  note. 

von  Martius,  his  conversion  to  the  evolu- 
tionary view  of  man,  i,  313. 

Mary  Alacoque,  St.,  hallucinations  of, 
ii,  120. 

Mary  Magdalen,  St.,  relics  of,  at  the 
monastery  of  Lerins,  i,  370. 

Mary  of  Egypt,  St.,  filthiness  of,  ii,  69. 

Masius,  his  great  work  on  Lot's  wife,  ii, 
243,  244.  Its  influence,  245.  Cited, 
245,  note. 

Mason,  John  V.,  permission  granted  to 
Lieutenant  Lynch  to  explore  the  Dead 
Sea  by,  ii,  250. 

Masoretic  texts,  belief  in  their  inspira- 
tion, ii,  178. 

Maspero,  on  the  artistic  merit  of  the 
Sphinx,  i,  260.  On  the  change  of  col- 
our in  the  Nile,  ii,  375.  Cited,  i,  3, 
note  ;  25,  note  ;  54,  note  ;  90,  note  ; 
gr,  note  ;  265,  note  ;  373,  note);  374, 
note  ;  ii,  3,  note  ;  28,  note  ;  32,  note  ; 
371,  note  ;  374,  note  ;  376,  note  ;  377, 
note. 

Massachusetts,  Governor  of  the  Province 
of,  his  approval  of  Cotton  Mather's 
book  on  witchcraft,  ii,  152. 

Massei,  cited,  ii,  21,  note. 

Massey,  E.,  on  inoculation,  ii,  55. 

Massey,  W.,  cited,  ii,  196,  note. 

Mastodon,  Calmet's  theory  regarding  the, 
i,  226. 

Mastrofini,  Abbate,  his  attempt  to  prove 
that  the  Church  had  never  objected  to 
the  taking  of  moderate  interest,  ii,  284. 
Cited,  2S3,  note  ;  285,  note. 

Materials  for  the  History  of  Thomas 
Becket,  cited,  ii,  25,  note. 

Mathematics,  effect  of  belief  in  magic 
upon,  i,  383. 

Mather,  Cotton,  his  acceptance  of  the 
new  astronomy,  i,  149,  207.  On  the 
signs  of  the  heavens,  197.     On  storms, 


335.  Witch  persecution  stimulated 
by,  361  ;  ii,  127.  Attack  on,  for  accept- 
ing the  theory  of  inoculation,  56,  57. 
On  the  cause  of  plagues,  85.  His  lib- 
eral attitude  toward  science,  146.  His 
great  work  on  witchcraft.  147.  The 
part  played  by  him  in  the  Salem  witch 
persecution,  150,  152.  His  controversy 
with  Calef,  153.  His  sorrow  over  the 
decline  of  the  superstition,  154.  His 
opposition  to  the  theological  views  of 
philology,  1S7.  His  argument  in  fa- 
vour of  interest-taking,  277.  Cited, 
i,  150,  note;  197,  note;  ii,  86,  note; 
188,  note  ;  277,  note. 

Mather,  Increase,  his  belief  regarding 
eclipses,  i,  173,  196.  His  sermons  on 
comets,  194-196;  195,  note.  His  trea- 
tise on  comets,  196.  His  opinion  on 
fossils,  227.  On  storms,  335  ;  363, 
note.  Witch  persecution  stimulated 
by,  361  ;  ii,  127.  His  acceptance  of 
the  theory  of  inoculation,  57.  His 
book  on  witchcraft,  146.  Cited,  i,  174, 
note  ;  196,  note  ;  228,  note  ;  335,  note  ; 
363,  note. 

Mather,  Samuel,  cited,  ii,  188,  note. 

Matter,  non-existence  of,  before  the  crea- 
tion, i,  4.  Early  belief  in  the  pre-ex- 
istence  of,  4.  St.  Augustine  on,  5. 
Reisch's  belief  in,  26. 

Matthew,  St.,  medicinal  properties  of  his 
relics,  ii,  42.  Commentator  of,  on 
madness,  112. 

Matthew,  Gospel  of,  cited,  ii,  101,  note. 

Matthews,  P.,  on  natural  selection,  i,  65. 

Maudsley,  cited,  ii,  103,  note  ;  120,  note  ; 
121,  note  ;  130,  note  ;  140,  note  ;  144, 
note  ;  166,  note. 

Maundrell,  Rev.  Henry,  on  the  Dead 
Sea  legends,  ii,  242.  Cited,  213,  note  ; 
243,  note. 

Maupertuis,  his  presentation  of  an  evo- 
lutionary doctrine,  i,  62. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  his  desertion  of  Colenso, 

ii.  353- 

Maury,  cited,  i,  175,  note  ;  217,  note  ; 
338,  note  ;  374,  note  ;  386,  note  ;  ii,  25, 
note  ;  42,  note  ;  9S,  note  ;  101,  note  ; 
139,  note. 

May  bugs,  excommunication  of,  ii,  113. 

Mayence,  Archbidiop  of,  his  treatment 
of  Isenbiehl,  ii.  321. 

Mazurier,  his  exhibition  of  the  masto- 
don's bones,  i,  226,  227. 

Mead,  on  sanitary  precautions,  ii,  82, 
90. 

Mecca,  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i,  98. 
Legend  of  the  Caaba  at,  ii,  217. 

Mechlin,  Archbishop  of,  on  Copernicus 
and  his   theory,   i,    122,  note.     Grand 


444 


INDEX. 


Vicar  of,  imprisonment  of  La  Peyrere 
by  him,  i,  255  ;  ii,  317. 

Medical  science  among  the  early  Egyp- 
tians, i,  262. 

Medicine,  from  miracles  to,  ii,  1-66. 
Effect  of  mediaeval  miracles  on,  23-26. 
"  Pastoral  medicine,"  its  influence  on 
scientific  effort,  27-30.  New  begin- 
nings of,  33-36.  Theological  discour- 
agement of,  36-45.  Theological  argu- 
ment against,  43.  Final  breaking  away 
of  the  theological  theory  in,  63-66.  Re- 
lation between  imagination  and,  64,  65. 
Effect  of  theological  influence  over 
education  on,  66.  Effect  of  the  revival 
of  the  science  of,  117. 

Mediterranean,  comparison  of  its  level 
with  that  of  the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  221. 

Medusa,  story  of,  ii,  215. 

Megatherium,  its  presence  in  South 
America,  i,  45. 

Melanchthon,  on  the  creation,  i,  8.  On 
the  shape  of  the  earth,  97.  His  con- 
demnation of  Copernicus,  126, 127, 134, 
212.  On  comets,  182.  His  sacred 
chronology,  252,  253.  His  ideas  on 
physics,  400.  Recovery  of,  at  the  sight 
of  Luther,  ii,  7.  On  the  descent  of 
Christ  into  hell,  1 15.  On  the  taking 
of  interest,  272.  His  method  of  exe- 
gesis, 305-307.  Cited,  i,  10,  note  ;  116, 
note  ;  127,  note  ;  129,  note  ;  135,  note  ; 
399,  note  ;  ii,  308,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Melos,  metamorphosis  of,  ii,  219. 

Memphis,  Egypt,  perfection  of  artistic 
work  in  the  tombs  about,  i,  260. 

Memphis,  Tennessee,  yellow-fever  epi- 
demic at,  ii,  94. 

Mena,  date  of  his  reign,  i,  258,  259. 

Menabrea,  cited,  ii,  113,  note. 

Mendeleefs  law,  chemistry  made  pre- 
dictive by,  i,  407. 

Mendham,  cited,  i,  125,  note. 

Menes.     See  Mena. 

Menzer,  cited,  i,  123,  note. 

Mercati,  Michael,  his  theory  regarding 
thunder-stones,  i,  267. 

Mercator,  cited,  i,  no,  note. 

Mercury,  his  punishment  of  offenders,  ii, 

215. 

Mercury,  its  place  in  the  spheres,  1,  118. 

Merian's  Icones  Biblicce,  cited,  ii,  237, 
note. 

Merivale,  cited,  i,  332,  note. 

Mermaid,  De  Maillet's  derivation  of 
man  from  the,  i,  59. 

Meru,  Mount,  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i, 
98. 

Meryon,  cited,  ii,  62,  note  ;  71,  note. 

Metaphysics,  employment  of,  by  theo- 
logians, i,  6,  33. 


Meteorology,  from  "  the  prince  of  the 
power  of  the  air"  to,  i,  323-372. 
Growth  of  a  theological  theory  of, 
323-336  ;  its  death-blow,  364.  At- 
tempts at  compromise  between  scien- 
tific and  theological,  365.  Practical 
results  of  scientific,  368,  372.  Porta's 
book  on,  393.    Early  theory  of,  ii,  170. 

Meteors,  ancient  beliefs  regarding,  i,  171. 

Methodist  Quarterly  Review,  cited,  i,  73, 
note. 

Methodists,  Calvinistic,  in  Wales,  jump- 
ing epidemic  among,  ii,  157. 

Metz,  dancing  epidemic  at,  ii,  137. 

Mewing,  epidemic  of,  in  convents,  ii,  141. 

Mexicans,  their  legend  of  the  confusion 
of  tongues,  ii,  173. 

Mexico,  early  civilization  in,  i,  306. 

Meyer,  C,  cited,  i,  344,  note  ;  345,  note  ; 
ii,  25,  note. 

Meyer,  E.,  date  assigned  by  him  for  the 
reign  of  Mena,  i,  259.  Cited,  ii,  371, 
note. 

Meyer,  G.  W.,  cited,  ii,  313,  note  ;  321, 
note  ;  332,  note. 

Mezger,  Prof.,  on  Lot's  wife's  statue,  ii, 
241.     Cited,  243,  note. 

Mice,  theological  theory  of,  i,  30.  Ex- 
communication of,  ii,  113. 

Michael,  St.,  plague  caused  by,  ii,  70. 

Michael  Angelo,  his  Sistine  frescoes,  i, 
n,  12. 

Michaelis,  exorcist,  his  activity  in  exor- 
cising possessed  persons,  ii,  143. 

Michaelis.  J.  D.,  on  the  transformation 
of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  256.  His  hostility  to 
Astruc,  323.     Cited,  286,  note. 

Michelet,  cited,  i,  339,  note. 

Michelis  on  Darwinism,  i,  73. 

Michigan,  State  University  of,  its  recall 
of  Prof.  Winchell,  i,  315.  Its  attitude 
toward  science,  406. 

Middle  Ages,  ideas  of  the  creation  in,  i, 
7,  13,  15.  Docility  of  belief  in,  27, 
31.  Theological  character  of  the  study 
of  nature  in,  32.  Best  legacy  of,  to 
Christendom,  49. 

Middleton,  Conyers,  cited,  ii,  66,  note. 

Migne's  Encyclope'die  Theologique,  cited, 
i,  376,  note. 

Milan,  torture  and  death  of  the  "  Un- 
tori"  for  causing  plague  at,  ii,  75-77. 
The  "  Column  of  Infamy  "  at,  77. 

Milius,  A.,  his  work  on  zoology,  i,  46, 47. 
Cited,  49,  note. 

Miller,  Hugh,  his  defence  of  the  theo- 
logical theory  of  the  creation,  i,  49. 

Mills,  L.  H.,  on  the  influence  of  Persian 
ideas  on  the  Hebrews,  ii,  378.  Cited, 
379,  note. 

Milman,  his  work  in  Jewish  and  Church 


INDEX. 


445 


history,  ii,  340.  Cited,  i,  117,  note; 
378,  note  ;  392,  note  ;  ii,  270,  note  ; 
303,  note  ;  308,  note  ;  316,  note  ;  341, 
note. 

Milner,  his  account  of  a  miraculous  cure, 
ii,  42.     Cited,  43,  note. 

Milo,  Archbishop  of  Beneventum,  his 
efforts  in  behalf  of  medicine,  ii,  35. 

Milton,  influence  of,  on  the  conception  of 
the  creation,  i,  4.  His  attitude  toward 
the  Copernican  theory,  147.  On  the 
portent  of  comets,  181.  His  influence 
on  the  dogma  of  the  fall  of  man,  286. 
Cited,  4,  note. 

Minasi,  his  teaching  of  Linnseus's  views 
at  Rome,  i,  60. 

Mines,  the  activity  of  evil  spirits  in,  i, 
402-404. 

Minnesota,  explorations  in  the  drift  in,  i, 
279. 

Miocene  period,  existence  of  man  in,  i, 
282. 

Miralnlia  Roma,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Miracles,  from,  to  medicine,  ii,  1-66.  Al- 
leged miracles  in  the  life  of  Xavier,  6- 
20.  Effect  of  mediaeval,  on  medicine, 
23-25.  Foundation  of  fact  in,  24,  25. 
Effect  on  medicine  of  a  belief  in,  65. 

Miracle-plays,  diabolic  element  in,  ii, 
in. 

Miriam,  cause  of  her  leprosy,  ii,  2. 

Miron,  Bishop  of  Angers,  his  treatment 
of  a  case  of  alleged  diabolic  posses- 
sion, ii,  141,  142. 

Mislin,  his  work  on  Palestine,  ii,  258. 
Cited,  260,  note. 

Missals,  illuminated,  their  preservation 
of  medioeval  conceptions,  i,  3,  n,  36. 

Mission,  in  Roman  Catholic  countries, 
its  similarity  to  a  revival,  ii,  162. 

Missionaries,  their  accounts  of  the  an- 
tipodes, i,  109.  Their  contributions  to 
comparative  philology,  ii,  189. 

Mitchell,  John,  his  adherence  to  the  sci- 
entific method  in  geology,  i,  217. 

Mitchell,  \V.,  on  Darwinism,  i,  73. 
Cited,  73,  note. 

Mitilerius,  his  attempt  to  prove  German 
the  primitive  speech,  ii,  184. 

Mivart,  his  conditional  acceptance  of  the 
theory  of  evolution,  i,  82.  On  the  re- 
lations of  the  Church  to  science,  165, 
166,  320.  On  Galileo's  condemnation, 
217,  note.  Cited,  56,  note;  87,  note; 
159,  note  ;  163,  note  ;  166,  note  1217, 
note. 

Moabites,  representation  of  their  origin 
in  Luther's  Bible,  ii,  236. 

Mohammed,  imprint  of  his  feet  on  a 
stone,  ii,  212. 

Mohammedanism,     charge     of,    against 


Roger  Bacon,  i,  389.  Against  phy- 
sicians, ii,  38. 

Mohammedans,  their  belief  regarding  the 
centre  of  the  earth,  i,  98.  Their  be- 
lief regarding  meteoric  showers,  172. 
Development  of  medical  science  by,  ii, 
33,  34.  Their  care  for  the  insane,  105, 
132.  Their  acceptance  of  the  story  of 
Lot's  wile,  226,  241. 

Mohrinersee,  imprints  of  the  devil's 
grandmother's  shoulder  on  a  stone  at, 
ii,  212. 

Moles,  reason  of  their  creation,  i,  43. 
Excommunication  of,  ii,  113. 

Momerie,  A.  W.,  cited,  i,  322,  note. 

Monasteries,  practice  of  medicine  at,  ii, 
33.     Sources  of  mental  disease,  121. 

Mone,  F.  J.,  cited,  ii,  111,  note. 

Money-lenders,  condemnation  of,  by  the 
Church,  ii,  266-268.  Punishment  of, 
26S.     Popular  feeling  against,  271. 

Monk,  cited,  ii,  188,  note. 

Monkeys,   existence   of  demons   proved 

by,  i,  35- 

Monreale,  representation  of  the  creation 
in  the  cathedral  of,  i,  3,  note. 

Monster,  asslike,  found  near  Rome,  Lu- 
ther's and  Melanchthon's  explanation 
of  its  significance,  ii,  306,  307. 

Montagu,  Lady,  her  encouragement  of 
inoculation  against  smallpox,  ii,  63. 

Montaigne,  his  influence  against  belief 
in  witchcraft,  i,  362  ;  ii,  122,  141.  In- 
fluence of  his  suggestions  on  the  ac- 
ceptance of  myths,  239.  Cited,  332, 
note. 

Montalembert,  cited,  ii,  43,  note. 

Montanus,  cited,  i,  344,  note  ;  346,  note. 

Monte,  Cardinal,  on  the  miracles  of  Xav- 
ier, ii,  14,  15. 

Monte  Cassino,  establishment  of  Infirm- 
ary at,  ii,  3. 

Monteil,  cited,  ii,  34,  note  ;  35,  note. 

Montesquieu,  treatment  of  his  suggestion 
regarding  the  antiquity  of  the  earth,  i, 
267.  His  influence  against  the  theory 
of  demoniacal  possession,  ii,  125.  His 
attack  on  the  theological  doctrines  re- 
garding interest,  281.  Cited,  i,  269, 
note  ;  ii,  270,  note  ;  282,  note. 

Montfaucon,  cited,  i,  95,  note  ;  115,  note. 

Montgeron,  cited,  ii,  25,  note. 

Monthly  Religious  Magazine,  on  evolu- 
tion, i,  80.     Cited,  86,  note. 

Montpellier,  conduct  of  the  physicians 
from,  during  the  plague  at  Marseilles, 
ii,  86. 

Montpellier,  School  of,  development  of 
medical  science  at,  ii,  34. 

Montreal,  ship-fever  and  smallpox  epi- 
demics at,  ii,  60. 


446 


INDEX. 


Montucla,  cited,  i,  107,  note  ;  no,  note; 
392,  note. 

Mook,  on  the  stone  implements  of  the 
Nile  Valley,  i,  298.  Cited,  281,  note  ; 
301,  note. 

Moon,  representation  of,  in  mediaeval 
art,  i,  1,  12.  Creation  of,  12.  Char- 
acter of  its  light,  13.  Its  place  in  the 
spheres,  118.  Its  influence  on  the 
brain,  ii,  38.  Its  relation  to  madness, 
112. 

Moore,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
370.  Cited,  313,  note  ;  321,  note;  332, 
note;  333,  note. 

Moorhouse,  Dr.,  his  utterance  on  mete- 
orology, i,  372. 

Moors,  scientific  research  by  the,  i,  391. 

More,  Henry,  belief  in  witchcraft  sup- 
ported by,  i,  361. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  his  belief  in  the  effi- 
cacy of  scourging  lunatics,  ii,  no, 
129. 

Morin,  Jean,  on  the  errors  in  biblical 
manuscripts,  ii,  319. 

Morinus,  S.,  on  the  origin,  purity,  and 
sanctity  of  Hebrew,  ii,  1S5, 186.  Cited, 
188,  note. 

Morison,  on  the  story  of  Lot's  wife's 
statue,  ii,  242.     Cited,  243,  note. 

Morley,  Henry,  cited,  i,  214,  note;  355, 
note  ;  ii,  53,  note. 

Morlot,  his  attempt  to  give  the  chronol- 
ogy of  various  prehistoric  periods,  i,  2S3. 

Morrill,  Justin  S.,  his  bill  for  the  endow- 
ment of  colleges,  i,  413-415. 

Morris,  F.  O.,  cited,  i,  73,  note. 

Mortillet,  Gabriel,  foundation  of  his  re- 
view, i,  275.  On  the  evidence  of  man's 
antiquity,  2S2.  The  Abbe  Hamard's 
attack  on,  300.  Cited,  269,  note  ;  283, 
note  ;  289,  note  ;  291,  note  ;  294,  note  ; 
301,  note. 

Morton,  John,  Cardinal,  law  against  loan- 
ing at  interest  secured  by,  ii,  271. 

Morton,  Nathaniel,  on  the  significance 
of  comets,  i,  194.     Cited,  195,  note. 

Morton,  Thomas,  Bishop,  his  influence 
against  belief  in  witchcraft,  i,  362. 

Morzine,  epidemic  of  diabolic  possession 
at,  ii,  159-162. 

Mosaics,  their  preservation  of  mediaeval 
ideas  of  the  creation,  i,  3,  n,  13. 

Moseley,  Dr.,  on  vaccination,  ii,  58. 

Moses,  St.  Ambrose  on  his  inspiration,  i, 
25.  His  influence  on  the  dogma  of 
fixity  of  species,  31.  Supernatural  an- 
nouncement of  his  birth,  172.  His 
position  in  Eusebius's  chronological 
tables,  250.  The  tongue  used  by,  ii, 
175.  Invention  of  letters  ascribed  to, 
197,  204.     Imprint   of  his   body  near 


Mount  Sinai,  211.  Laws  of,  their  con- 
demnation of  usury,  265.  Belief  in 
his  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  311. 
Vatke's  theory  as  to  the  date  of  the 
legislation  ascribed  to,  329.  Simi- 
larity between  his  story  and  that  of 
King  Sargon,  372,  375. 

Moslems.     See  Mohammedans. 

Moth,  reason  for  its  creation,  i,  43. 

Moulin  Quignon,  alleged  discovery  of 
human  remains  in  the  drift  at,  i,  278. 

Mounds,  evidence  of  man's  progress  fur- 
nished by,  i,  296. 

Mountains,  myths  inspired  by,  ii,  210. 

Movers,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii,- 
363- 

Mozley,  cited,  ii,  341,  note. 

Muhlenberg,  his  works  of  mercy,  ii,  4. 

Mukadassi,  on  the  wonders  of  the  Dead 
Sea  region,  ii,  229. 

Miiller,  Johann  Georg,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Miiller,  Julius,  his  support  of  Hupfeld, 
ii,  328,  note. 

Miiller,  Max,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  70. 
Light  thrown  by  him  on  man's  spir- 
itual evolution,  312.  His  work  in 
philology,  ii,  203,  379.  His  election 
as  Professor  of  Sanskrit  at  Oxford,  343. 
Cited,  i,  37,  note  ;  374,  note  ;  ii,  66, 
note;  174,  note;  182,  note;  192,  note  ; 
196,  note  ;  384,  note. 

Miiller,  Otfried,  cited,  i,  310,  note. 

Miiller,  Otto  Frederik,  his  researches  in 
bacteriology,  ii,  65. 

Mundinus,  practice  of  dissection  by,  ii, 
50. 

Munich  Cathedral,  survival  of  mediaeval 
idea  of  creation  exhibited  at  the  four 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  founding 
of,  i,  12,  note. 

Munich-Freising,  attitude  of  its  arch- 
bishops toward  science,  ii,  255. 

Munro,  cited,  i,  287,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Minister,  cited,  i,  100,  note. 

Murphy,  Jeremiah,  his  defence  of  the 
Church's  condemnation  of  Galileo,  i, 
165. 

Murray,  J.  B.  C,  cited,  ii,  266,  note ; 
277,  note. 

Murray's  guide-books,  cited,  ii,  30,  note  ; 
81,  note;  213,  note  ;  218,  note. 

Musasus,  his  interpretation  of  Genesis,  i, 
98. 

Muskrat,  its  bones  found  with  those  of 
earlier  animals,  i,  81. 

Myrrha,  metamorphosis  of,  ii,  219. 

Myrtle,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Mysteries,  mediaeval,  their  evidence  as 
to  mediaeval  ideas,  i,  13. 

Mysticism  in  interpreting  Scripture,  the 
law  governing,  ii,  293. 


INDEX. 


447 


Mystics,  influence  of  the  alleged  writings 
of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite  on,  ii,  315. 

Myths,  explanatory  of  the  confusion  of 
tongues,  ii,  170-174.  Necessity  of,  in 
early  times,  208,  263.  The  growth  of 
explanatory  transformation,  209-220. 
The  material  from  which  our  sacred 
books  are  evolved,  23S.  Growth  of 
secondary,  2S9.  Mystical  interpreta- 
tion of,  293.     Their  place  in  history, 

339,  34°- 

Myth-making,  its  influence  on  epidemics 
of  mental  disease,  ii,  166. 

Mythology,  Comparative,  from  the  Dead 
Sea  legends  to,  ii,  209-263.  Origin  of 
the  science,  219,  220.  Its  influence  on 
religion,  220.  Its  solution  of  vital 
problems,  393. 

Naaman,  the  cure  of,  ii,  26. 

Names  of  all  created  things,  given  by 
Adam,  ii,  196. 

Nantes,  Edict  of,  its  results,  ii,  1S6. 

Naples,  formation  of  the  Academy  for 
the  Study  of  Nature  at,  i,  41.  Inter- 
cession against  the  plague  in,  ii,  78. 
Liquefaction  of  St.  Januarius's  blood 
in  the  Cathedral  of,  79,  80.  Survival 
of  the  tarantella  at,  140. 

Napoleon  I,  his  name  omitted  from  cer- 
tain historical  text-books,  i,  319.  Ef- 
fect of  his  interference  on  the  sanitary 
conditions  in  Spain,  ii,  81.  Influence 
of  his  reign  on  religious  reaction,  247, 
248. 

Napoleon  III,   charitable  works   of,  ii, 

93,  94- 

Narbonne,  Archbishop  of,  his  contest  for 
possession  of  the  relics  of  St.  Just  and 
St.  Pastor,  ii,  29. 

Nash,  cited,  ii,  348,  note. 

Nashville  American,  cited,  i,  316,  note. 

Nashville  Christian  Advocate,  cited,  i, 
316,  note. 

Nat  demon,  transformation  of,  ii,  215. 

Nation,  The  New  York,  cited,  i,  356, 
note. 

National  Conference  of  Unitarian  and 
Other  Christian  Churches  held  at 
Saratoga,  Official  Report  of  the,  cited, 
i,  235,  note. 

Naturalists,  theological,  their  contribu- 
tions to  science,  i,  33. 

Nature,  Greek  conception  of,  i,  14. 
New-formed  pictorial  representation 
of,  26.  Belief  in  futility  of  the  study 
of,  32.  Religious  teachings  of,  35,  36. 
Beginnings  of  a  scientific  method  in 
the  study  of,  40,  41. 

Nature,  cited,  i,  77,  note. 

Natur  und  Offenbarung,  cited,  i,  77,  note. 


Naude,  his  list  of  great  men  charged 
with  magic,  i,  366.  Cited,  107,  note  ; 
386,  note. 

Navarrete,  cited,  i,  112,  note. 

Neander,  cited,  i,  106,  note. 

Neanderthal,  discovery  of  human  bones 
in  the,  i,  281,  290. 

Nebuchadnezzar,  transformation  of,  i,  55. 

Nebulae,  spectrum  analysis  of,  i,  17. 

Nebular  hypothesis,  conception  of,  by 
Bruno,  i,  15.     Development  of,  17-19. 

Negroes,  types  of,  sculptured  on  early 
Egyptian  monuments,  i,  259.  Of 
Africa,  myths  among,  ii,  217. 

Nelli,  his  transference  of  Galileo's  re- 
mains to  Santa  Croce,  i,  147. 

Nelme,  Lord,  on  the  origin  of  the  diver- 
sity in  language,  ii,  191.  Cited,  192, 
note. 

Nemesius,  Bishop,  his  theory  of  insanity, 
ii,  103. 

Neptune's  trident,  its  mysterious  con- 
nection with  the  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 
ity, ii,  203,  294. 

Nero,  supernatural  announcement  of  his 
downfall,  i,  173. 

Netherlands,  epidemics  of  diabolic  pos- 
session in,  ii,  137. 

Nettles,  reason  for  the  creation  of,  i,  42. 

Neumann,  cited,  ii,  269,  note  ;  277,  note 
285,  note. 

Neustadt,  legend  of  stones  at,  ii,  216. 

New  Belgium,  traces  of  the  Hebrew 
tongue  in,  ii,  184. 

New  England,  character  of  the  early 
colonists'  life  in,  ii,  145.  Traces  of 
the  Hebrew  tongue  in,  184. 

New-Englander,  The,  cited,  i,  154,  note  ; 
ii,  207,  note. 

Newgate,  jail  fever  at,  ii,  84. 

New   Guinea,    the     lake-dwellers   of,  i, 

295- 

Newman,  J.  H.,  his  effort  at  a  compro- 
mise between  theology  and  the  Coper- 
nican  system,  i,  166.  His  test  of  truth, 
ii,  226.  His  influence  on  English 
thought,  334.  Cited,  i,  167,  note;  ii, 
341,  note. 

Newton,  effect  of  his  work,  i,  15,  17,  49. 
French  edition  of  his  Principia,  154, 
155.  The  modern  theory  of  comets 
established  by  him,  188,  202,  203.  As- 
tronomy made  predictive  by  his  cal- 
culations, 407.  His  rejection  of  the 
text  from  St.  John  regarding  the 
"  three  witnesses,"  ii,  305,  310.  His 
exegesis  of  the  Scriptures,  310.  Cited, 
311,  note. 

New  York  Church  Journal,  its  charac- 
terization of  Mill  and  Draper,  i,  154, 
note. 


448 


INDEX. 


New  York  Evening  Post,  cited,  ii,  61, 
note. 

New  York  Senate  Documents,  cited,  ii, 
95,  note. 

New  York  Tribune,  cited,  ii,  163,  note. 

New  York  Weekly  Sun,  cited,  i,  86,  note. 

New  Zealanders,  absence  of  pottery  and 
of  spinning  among,  i,  306. 

N  iagara,  as  an  exhibition  of  divine  caprice, 
i,  2S.  Geological  evidence  in  the 
rocks  at,  241. 

Nicene  Creed,  conception  of  creation  in 
the,  i,  10. 

Nichol,  cited,  ii,  58,  note. 

Nicholas  III,  Pope,  persecution  of  Roger 
Bacon  by,  i,  389. 

Nicholas  IV,  Pope,  persecution  of  Roger 
Bacon  by,  i,  389. 

Nicholas  V,  Pope,  his  decretal  against 
Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 

Nicholas  I,  Czar,  his  influence  in  behalf 
of  scriptural  science,  i,  269. 

Nicholas,  Cardinal,  his  correction  of  the 
text  of  the  Bible,  ii,  304. 

Nicholas  of  Cusa.     See  Cusa. 

Nicholas,  Dr.  John,  his  account  of  a  re- 
markable case  of  the  efficacy  of  king's 
touch,  ii,  47. 

Nider,  his  book  on  ants,  i,  36. 

Niebuhr,  his  work  in  historical  criticism, 
ii,  339.     Cited,  341,  note. 

Nightingale,  Florence,  her  works  of 
mercy,  ii,  4. 

Nikon,  Patriarch  of  Moscow,  his  belief 
regarding  the  signification  of  comets, 
i,  182.  Bitter  opposition  to  his  revi- 
sion of  the  Slavonic  Scriptures,  ii,  310. 

Nile,  gods  of  the,  their  creation  of  man, 
i,  25.  Production  of  animal  life  in  its 
slime,  52.  Investigations  in  the  bed 
of  the,  263. 

Nile  Valley,  the  antiquity  of  man  in  the, 
i,  257,  259,  26-5,  279.  Discovery  of 
prehistoric  implements  in  the,  297-300. 

Nilsson,  his  classification  of  prehistoric 
man,  i,  288.  Cited,  2S7,  note  ;  294, 
note  ;  302,  note  ;  308,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Nilus,  St.,  on  the  cause  of  disease,  ii,  27. 

Nimr,  his  expulsion  from  the  American 
College  at  Beyrout,  i,  318. 

Nineteenth  Century,  cited,  i,  248,  note. 

Nineveh,  origin  of  the  legend  regarding 
the  fall  of  man  found  in  the  records 
of,  i,  301.  Library  of  Assurbanipal 
at,  20. 

Niobe,  myth  of,  ii,  215,  216.  Resem- 
blance of,  to  the  story  of  Lot's  wife, 
227,  257. 

Nisard,  cited,  i,  392,  note. 

Noah,  size  of  his  ark,  i,  31.  Difficulty 
suggested  by  his  having  taken  the  ani- 


mals into  the  ark  by  sevens,  39.  Grow- 
ing scepticism  regarding  the  story  of, 
44.  His  foreknowledge  of  the  Deluge, 
330.  Mystic  significance  of  the  pitch- 
ing of  his  ark,  ii,  299.  Signification 
of  his  drunkenness,  299. 

Norman  conquest,  thought  to  have  been 
presaged  by  a  comet,  i,  176,  177. 

North  America,  difficulty  suggested  by 
the  distribution  of  animals  in,  i,  45. 

North  British  Review,  cited,  i,  73, 
note. 

Notker,  of  St.  Gall,  his  efforts  in  behalf 
of  medicine,  ii,  35. 

Nourrisson,  cited,  i,  301,  note. 

Nouvelle  Biographie  GJne'rale,  cited,  ii, 
321,  note. 

Novalis,  his  characterization  of  Spinoza, 
ii,  318. 

Noyes,  his  activity  in  the  Salem  witch 
persecution,  ii,  152. 

Nuber,  his  weather-sermons,  i,  334. 
Cited,  334,  note. 

Numbers,  mystic  virtues  of,  i,  6,  7,  395, 
396  ;  ii,  296,  298,  299. 

Numbers,  book  of,  cited,  ii,  68,  note. 

Nunez,  Melchior,  his  attempt  to  learn  of 
Xavier's  miracles,  ii,  12. 

Nunneries,  epidemics  of  hysteria  in,  ii, 
141,  143,  144-  156. 

Nuremberg  Chronicle,  explanation  of  the 
creation  in,  i,  7.  Cited,  8,  note  ;  120, 
note  ;  ii,  54,  note  ;   170,  note.  * 

Nuremberg  medal,  ridiculing  Copernicus, 
i,  128. 

Oaks,  found  in  the  peat-beds  of  Den- 
mark, i,  293.     Origin  of,  ii,  219. 

Oannes,  the  giver  of  language  to  the 
Chaldeans,  ii,  169. 

Ober-Ammergau,  refusal  to  allow  rep- 
resentation of  Satan  in  the  Passion 
Play  at,  ii,  128. 

Oblate  Fathers,  their  hostility  to  vacci- 
nation in  Montreal,  ii,  60. 

Observations,    mistaken,    their  effect,  i, 

43- 
Occam,  William,  on  the  Redemption,  i, 

397- 

Odin,  as  a  minister  of  Satan,  i,  336. 

CEdipus,  his  position  in  Eusebius's  chro- 
nological tables,  i,  250. 

Og,  King  of  Bashan,  his  escape  from  the 
Deluge,  ii,  293. 

Ohio,  explorations  in  the  drift  in,  i,  279. 

Ohm,  his  influence  on  the  development 
of  physics,  i,  407. 

Ointment,  sanctified,  its  efficacy  against 
demoniacal  possession,  ii,  102. 

Oken,  his  presentation  of  an  evolutionary 
doctrine,  i,  62. 


INDEX. 


449 


Olaf,  St.,  transformation  of  giants  into 

stone  by,  ii,  216. 
Olaus  Magnus,  on  the  efficacy  of  bell- 
ringing  against  storms,  i.  349.     Cited, 
349,  note. 
Old   Believers,  origin  of  the  sect  of,  in 

Russia,  ii,  310,  and  note. 
Oldenberg,  cited,  i,  172,  note. 
Old  Orchard,  cures  wrought  at,  ii,  24,  45. 
Oliva,  his  death,  i,  393. 
Olmsted,  his  work  at  Yale,  i,  412. 
Olympus,  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i, 

93. 
Omar,  Caliph,  his  protection  of  Paul  of 

/Egina,  ii,  99,  132. 
Onondaga  Indians,   their  alleged    tradi- 
tions of  giants,  ii,  21S. 
Oort,    Hooykaas,    and    Kuenen's     The 
Bible  for  Young  People,  cited,  i,  172  ; 
ii,  98,  333,  note. 
Opossum,  difficulty  of  accounting  for  its 
presence  in  North  America,  i,  45.     Its 
bones  found  with  those  of  earlier  ani- 
mals, 81. 
Oppert,  his  work  in  deciphering  ancient 
records,  i,  20,  51.     Reading  of  Assyr- 
ian inscriptions  by,  ii,   170.     His  re- 
searches in  Assyria,  370. 
Optics,  Porta's  researches  in,  i,  393. 
Oracles,  from  the  divine,  to  the  higher 
criticism,  ii,  288-396.    Philo's  designa- 
tion of  the  Scriptures  as,  294. 
Orange,  soldiers  of  the  Prince  of,  cured 

of  scurvy,  ii,  64. 
Orcagna,   his   representation    of    Cecco 

d'Ascoli,  i,  107. 
Ordericus  Vitalis,  cited,  i,  177,  note. 
Oresme,  Nicolas  d',  his  attitude  toward 

the  doctrine  of  the  antipodes,  i,  106. 
Origen,  his  theory  of  the  creation,  i,  5. 
On  the  size  of  the  ark,  54.  His  belief 
in  the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  97.  On 
the  nature  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  114. 
On  comets,  175.  His  views  on  the 
antiquity  of  man,  250.  On  demons, 
ii,  27.  On  the  primitive  speech  of 
man,  175.  On  the  number  of  the  Gos- 
pels, 296.  His  exegesis  of  Scripture, 
297,  301.  His  interpretation  of  Solo- 
mon's Song,  326.  Cited,  i,  6,  note  ; 
115,  note  ;  175,  note  ;  ii,  28,  note  ;  176, 
note  ;  300,  note. 
Orleans,  House  of,    its    attitude  toward 

learning,  i,  270. 
Ornithorhynchus,    presence    of    the,    in 

Australia,  i,  45. 
Orpheus,  his  position  in  Eusebius's  chro- 
nological tables,  i,  250. 
Osbern,  cited,  ii,  25,  note. 
Osborn,  Dr.  H.  F.,  cited,  i,  4,  note  ;  54, 
note. 

57 


Osborn,   the  Rev.  H.  S.,  on   the  Dead 
Sea  legends,  ii,  254,  259.     Cited,  225, 
note  ;  260,  note. 
Osborne,  S.  G.,  his  efforts  in  behalf  of 

sanitary  reform,  ii,  91. 
Osiander,  his  publication  of  Copernicus's 
great  astronomical  work,  i,  122.     His 
preface  to  this  work,  123  and  note. 
Osiris,  priests  of,  their  powers  over  dis- 
ease, ii,  1. 
Osier,  Prof.,  cited,  ii,  66,  note. 
Osten-Sacken,  cited,  i,  44,  note. 
Otho,  St.,  imprint  of  his  feet  on  a  stone, 

ii,  212. 
Ouse,  excavations  in  the  terraces  above 

the,  i,  278. 
Ovid,  his  picture  of  the  golden  age,  i, 
2S6.     Cited,  172,  note  ;  ii,  214,  note  ; 
218,  note  ;  219,  note. 
Ovid,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40. 
Owen,  Dr.  John,  on  the  Copernican  sys- 
tem, i,  128.    On  Newton's  discoveries, 
148,  150,  note. 
Owls,  transformation  of  men  into,  i,  55. 
Oxen,    their  mystic  significance  in   the 

Scripture,  ii,  300. 
Oxford,  clergy  of,  their  hostility  to  Dr. 
Priestley,  i,  149.  Roger  Bacon  at,  3S7 
-389.  Prejudice  against  scientific 
study  at,  406.  The  centre  of  English 
orthodoxy,  24  ;  ii,  335-337.  Treatment 
of  Edward  Everett  at,  335,  336.  The 
centre  of  the  movement  against  Essays 
and  Reviews,  346. 
Ox-hide,  its  use  in  flogging  breakers  of 
the  Jewish  law,  ii,  292. 

Pacific  coast,  antiquity  of  man  on  the,  i, 
2S0.  Prevalence  of  magic  among  the 
tribes  of,  373. 

Facific  islands,  myths  among  the  natives 
of,  ii,  217. 

Packard,  influence  of  Agassiz  on,  i,  69. 

Paganism,  its  traces  in  European  society, 

i,  336. 

Pa^es,  Leon,  cited,  ii,  21,  note. 

Paintings,  missal,  their  illustration  of 
scholastic  theology,  i,  II. 

Palestine,  imprint  of  Christ's  hands  or 
feet  on  stones  in,  ii,  212.  The  legends 
of,  220.  The  working  of  natural  laws 
in,  247.  Study  of  the  Scriptures  in, 
292,  293. 

Palestrina,  part  of  Solomon's  Song  set  to 
music  by,  ii,  326. 

Paley,  his  work  in  developing  sacred 
science,  i,  33,  43.  Unjust  criticism  of, 
44.  His  influence  in  behalf  of  ortho- 
dox science,  270.  On  Christ's  state- 
ment of  truths,  ii,  39T.  Cited,  i,  44. 
note  ;  ii,  391,  note. 


45o 


INDEX. 


Palissy,  Bernard,  his  theory  of  fossils,  i, 

214,  226. 
Pallavicini,  cited,  ii,  309,  note. 
Pallene,    the    rock    Lycabettus    brought 

from,  ii,  210. 
Palmer,  Prof.,  on  the  salt  columns  near 

the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  256,  263.     Cited,  i, 

252,   note  ;  264,  note  ;   ii,  225,  note ; 

257,  note. 
Palmerston,  Lord,  his  attitude  toward  the 

theological  view  of  sanitation,  ii,  95. 

Cited,  96,  note. 
Pan,  Mallet  du,  reason  assigned  by  him 

for  Galileo's  condemnation,  i,  159. 
Pandora,  fall  of  man  occasioned  by  her 

curiosity,  i,  285. 
Pangster,    Dr.,  on    mental   disorders,  ii, 

133- 

Panzer,  cited,  ii,  211,  note. 

Papstesel,  Luther's  and  Melanchthon's 
book  on  the,  ii,  306. 

Papyrus,  the  Berlin,  on  medical  science 
among  the  early  Egyptians,  i,  262. 

Parables,  necessity  of,  in  early  times,  ii, 
208,  263. 

Paracelsus,  his  scepticism  regarding  the 
oil  view  of  comets,  i,  178.  His  ex- 
planation of  thunder,  354.  Influence 
of  mystic  theology  on,  397.  His  work 
in  medical  science,  ii,  50.  His  oppo- 
sition to  the  theological  theory  of  dia- 
bolic possession,  139,  165. 

Parfait,  Paul,  cited,  i,  335,  note ;  344, 
note. 

Paris,  Archdeacon,  hysteria  and  miracu- 
lous cures  at  his  grave,  ii,  154,  155. 

Paris,  Gaston,  cited,  ii,  384,  note. 

Paris,  Matthew,  cited,  ii,  271,  note. 

Paris,  the  plague  at,  ii,  67.  Conduct  of 
the  physicians  from,  during  the  plague 
at  Marseilles,  86.  Conduct  of  the  mob 
during  the  cholera  epidemic  at,  89. 
Devotion  of  the  mob  of,  to  various 
celebrities,  142.  International  Expo- 
sition at,  explanation  of  the  tricks  of 
spiritualists  at,  155. 

Paris,  University  of,  study  of  medicine 
at,  ii,  49.  Its  condemnation  of  Eras- 
mus, 304. 

Parker,  Theodore,  persecution  of,  for 
publishing  a  translation  of  De  Wette's 
work,  ii,  327.  His  work  in  biblical 
criticism,  366,  367.     Cited,  332,  note. 

Parker  Society  Publications,  cited,  i,  180, 
note  ;  ii,  182,  note. 

Parkes,  cited,  ii,  95,  note. 

Parliament,  its  laws  against  lending  at 
interest,  ii,  268,  271.  Debate  on  usury 
in,  274. 

Parliament  of  Paris,  its  condemnation  of 
La  Peyrere's  book  on  the  pre-Adam- 


ites,  i,  255  ;  ii,  314.     Its  prohibition  of 

chemical  research,  i,  393. 
Parris,  the  Rev.  Samuel,  the  part  played 

by  him  in  the  Salem  witch  persecution, 

ii,    147-153.     His  expulsion  from  the 

pastorate  of  Salem,  154. 
Parton,  cited,  i,  367,  note. 
Partridge,  the,  as  an  illustration  of  "  the 

ends  of  Providence,"  i,  42. 
Parturition,  difficult,  mediceval  cures  for, 

ii,  42. 
Parvati,  mountain  hurled  at,  ii,  210. 
Pascal,  his  opposition  to  the    theory  of 

"  the    Fall,"    i,    288.     His    attack   on 

Escobar's   theories   of  usury,   ii,    2S0. 

Cited,  282,  note. 
Passau,    Bishop    of,   his    decree   against 

Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 
Passion  Play  at  Ober-Ammergau,  refusal 

to  allow  representation  of  Satan  in  the, 

ii,  128. 
Pasteur,  his  researches  in  bacteriology,  ii, 

Pastor,  St.,  value  of  his  relics,  ii,  28. 

Pastor,  L.,  cited,  i,  178,  note. 

Patagonia,  Darwin's  work  in,  i,  66. 

Patrick,  St.,  his  staff  received  from  St. 
Just,  i,  369. 

Pattison,  Mark,  his  part  in  Essays  and 
Reviews,  ii,  342.  Cited,  i,  256,  note  ; 
ii,  188,  note. 

Paul,  St.,  his  influence  on  the  dogma  of 
the  fixity  of  species,  i,  31.  His  sup- 
posed teachings  on  astronomy,  116. 
Relics  of,  at  the  monastery  of  Lerins, 
370.  Miraculous  powers  possessed  by 
his  handkerchief,  ii,  26.  Luther's  ideas 
of  insanity  based  on  his  question  to 
the  Galatians,  114,  135.  On  the  gods  of 
the  heathen,  i,  382  ;  ii,  27,  68, 136.  His 
references  to  the  Dead  Sea,  223.  Eras- 
mus on  the  authorship  of  certain  epis- 
tles attributed  to,  305.  His  alleged 
revelations  to  Dionysius  the  Areopa- 
gite,  315- 

Paul  II,  Pope,  on  the  powers  of  the  Ag- 
nus Dei,  ii,  30. 

Paul  III,  Pope,  his  refusal  to  let  Porta 
continue  scientific  investigation,  i,  393. 

Paul  V,  Pope,  his  attitude  toward  Gali- 
leo, i,  134,  136,  137.  His  condemna- 
tion of  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's  mo- 
tion, 138,  158,  165. 

Paul  of  /Egina,  on  madness,  ii,  99.  His 
investigations  of  insanity,  132. 

Paul  the  Deacon  (Paulus  Diaconus), 
cited,  ii,  74,  note. 

Paul,  St.  Vincent  de,  his  works  of  mercy, 

"•  4- 

Pausanias,  his  belief  in  Niobe's  trans- 
formation, ii,  216.     Cited,  218,  note. 


INDEX. 


451 


Pavia,  expulsion  of  the  Jews  from,  ii,  74. 

Payne,  cited,  ii,  45,  note. 

Peacock,  miraculous  quality  of  its  flesh, 

ii,  11,  note  ;  23. 
Pears  from  the  shores  of  the  Dead  Sea, 

Seetzen's  examination  of,  ii,  248,  249. 
Pearson,  Bishop,  on  chronology,  i,  255. 

Cited,  257,  note. 
Pearson,  J.  B.,  cited,  ii,  265,  note ;  269, 

note. 
Peasants   of    Russia,    ecclesiastical   pre- 
vention of  their   use   of  potatoes,  ii, 

285. 
Peat-beds    of  Scandinavia,    remains   of 

prehistoric  man  found  in,  i,  292,  293. 
Pebbles,  the  changing  of  peas  into,  ii, 

238. 
"  Peculiar  People,"    faith    cures   among 

the,  ii,  45. 
Peel,   Sir    Robert,   specimens    of  Dean 

Cockburn's  epistles  in  the  unpublished 

papers  of,  i,  225,  note. 
Peleg,  the  primitive  language  preserved 

by,  ii,  185. 
Peleus,  legend  of  a  rock  thrown  by,  ii, 

210. 
Pelican,  fabulous  account  of  the,  i,  33. 
Peloponnesian  War,  charge  of  poisoning 

during  the,  ii,  89. 
Pendulum   experiment,  its  influence  on 

the  doctrine  of  the  antipodes,  i,  109. 
Pengelly,  his  cave  explorations,  i,  276. 
Penikese,  Agassiz's  summer  school  at,  i, 

69. 
Penn,  Granville,  on  the  Creation  and  the 

Deluge,    i,    231,     241.      Cited,     231, 

note. 
Pennsylvania,  Bishop  of,  issuance  of  spe- 
cial call  to  prayer  by,  ii,  95. 
Pentateuch,  key  to  the  true  character  of, 

ii,  328. 
Pepys,  cited,  i,  204,  note. 
Percy,  his  development  of  Kepler's  com- 

etary  theory,  i,  202. 
Perrier,  cited,  i,  40,  note  ;  62,  note. 
Perrin,  his  flounderings  in  philology,  ii, 

192.     Cited,  192,  note. 
Perry,  Bishop,  on  evolution,  i,  72.    Cited, 

73,  note. 
Persecution,  religious,  warrant  found  for 

it  by  St  Augustine  in  one  of  Jesus's 

parables,  ii,  299. 
Persecution  for  witchcraft.     See  Witch 

PERSECUTION. 
Perseus,  punishment  of  those  offending, 

ii,  215. 
Persia,  geographical  conceptions  among 

the  inhabitants  of,  i,  90.    Development 

of  belief  in  magic  in,  373.     Acquire- 
ment of  this  belief  by  the  Hebrews, 

382.     Theory  of  disease  in,  ii,  2,  27, 


72.  Development  of  the  theory  of 
demoniacal  possession  in,  100. 

Persian  language,  its  dissimilarity  to  He- 
brew,  ii,  190. 

Person,  David,  his  reasoning  in  support 
of  the  scriptural  chronology,  i,  274. 
Cited,  399,  note. 

Perth,  the  plague  in,  ii,  88. 

Perthes,  Boucher  de,  his  great  work  on  the 
prehistoric  remains  of  France,  i,  271- 
273>  278.  Temporary  success  of  his 
opponents,  2S9.  Cited,  275,  note  ;  280, 
note  ;  291,  note. 

Peru,  early  civilization  in,  i,  306. 

Peruvian  bark,  Protestant  opposition  to 
the  use  of,  ii,  61,  62. 

Peruzzi,  cited,  ii,  270,  note. 

Pesch,  his  attack  on  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, i,  78. 

Peschel,  on  the  evidences  of  the  antiquity 
of  man  obtained  in  the  Nile  Valley,  i, 
263.  Cited,  95,  note  ;  100,  note  ;  102, 
note  ;  105,  note  ;  no,  note  ;  265,  note. 

Pestilences,  recurrence  of,  ii,  67.  Theo- 
ries of  their  cause,  67,  68.  Their  effect 
on  the  property  of  the  Church,  71. 

Petavius,  proof  of  the  worthlessness  of 
his  chronology,  i,  240.  On  the  date 
of  the  creation,  253. 

Peter,  St.,  identification  of  the  spot  where 
he  caught  one  hundred  and  fifty-three 
fishes,  i,  3S  ;  ii,  240.  Miraculous 
power  possessed  by  his  shadow,  26. 
His  attempt  to  escape  martyrdom,  212. 
His  references  to  the  Dead  Sea,  223. 
To  the  story  of  Lot's  wife,  226.  Sig- 
nificance of  his  draught  of  fishes,  299. 

Peter,  Second  Epistle  of,  cited,  i,  218, 
note  ;  ii,  226,  note. 

Peter  of  Abano,  persecution  of,  i,  107. 

Peter  Damian,  his  condemnation  of  sci- 
entific study,  i,  375. 

Peter  the  Deacon  (Petriis  Diacomis), 
cited,  ii,  231,  note. 

Peter  Lombard,  his  views  on  the  crea- 
tion, i,  7.  On  noxious  animals,  29. 
On  potential  and  actual  creation,  55. 
His  manual  of  theology,  the  .V<v/- 
tences,  116.  On  the  geocentric  theory, 
116.  On  the  work  of  devils,  119.  On 
the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  267.  Cited, 
i,  8,  note;  31,  note;  56,  note;  117, 
note  ;  ii,  269,  note. 

Peter  Martyr,  on  the  importance  of  un- 
derstanding the  work  of  creation,  i,  8. 
On  the  necessity  of  believing  the  Scrip- 
tural account  of  the  creation,  212. 
Cited,  10,  note  ;  213,  note. 

Peter,  J.,  cited,  ii,  81,  note. 

Peters,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
370. 


452 


INDEX. 


Petit,  Pierre,  his  protest  against  cometary 

superstitions,  i,  igS.    Cited,  199,  note  ; 

ii,  269,  note  ;  285,  note. 
Petrarch,  on  Averroism,  ii,  38. 
Pejrie,  Flinders,  on  the  date  of  Mena's 

reign,  i,  259.  On  the  geological  changes 

in  Egypt,  299.     Cited,  265,  note  ;  281, 

note  ;  302,  note  ;  ii,  376,  note. 
Pettigrew,  cited,  ii,  42,   note  ;  43,  note  ; 

139,  note  ;  166,  note. 
Peucer,  his  attitude  toward  the  Coper- 

nican  theory,  i,  129. 
Peuchen,  cited,  i,  348,  note. 
Pfeiffer,  on  the  creation,  i,  213.    On  the 

absolute   perfection   of    the    book    of 

Genesis,  ii,  312. 
Pfleiderer,  cited,  ii,  332,  note  ;  333,  note  ; 

335,  note  ;  351,  note  ;  353,  note  ;  362, 

note  ;  385,  note. 
Phalaris,  controversy  over  the  letters  of, 

ii,  337.  338. 

Pharos,  translation  of  Hebrew  Scripture 
on  the  island  of,  ii,  289. 

Pheasant,  its  illustration  of  the  ends  of 
Providence,  i,  42. 

Philadelphia,  sanitary  condition  of,  ii,  95. 
Hospital  for  the  insane  in,  130. 

Philse,  representation  of  the  creation  in 
the  temple  at,  i,  24. 

Philastrius,  St.,  on  heretical  beliefs  re- 
garding the  stars,  i,  115.  His  cata- 
logue of  heresies,  251.  Cited,  115, 
note  ;  252,  note. 

Philemon,  story  of,  ii,  214,  219. 

Philip  II,  of  Spain,  his  accession  due  to 
a  comet,  i,  176.  His  relations  with 
Vesalius,  ii,  51,  54.  His  persecution 
of  Luis  de  Leon,  325. 

Phillippi,  on  the  futility  of  geology,  i, 

237- 

Philo  Judseus,  his  theory  of  the  creation, 
i,  5.  On  the  mystic  significance  of 
numbers,  6.  His  development  of  the 
use  of  allegory  in  interpreting  the 
Scripture,  ii,  294.  His  speculations 
on  numbers,  296.  Cited,  i,.  8,  note  ; 
115,  note  ;  ii,  294,  note. 

Philolaus,  his  suggestion  of  a  heliocentric 
theory,,  i,.  120. 

Philologists,  effect  of  their  studies  on 
biblical  criticism,  i,  20.  Their  testi- 
mony regarding  the  antiquity  of  man 
in  Egypt,  262. 

Philology,  Comparative,  proofs  of  the 
theory  of  the  upward  tendency  of  man- 
kind derived  from,  i,  307,  308,  312. 
From  Babel  to,  ii,  168-208.  Results 
of  the  study  of,  168,  207.  Triumph 
of  the  new  science,  193-203.  Its  con- 
clusions regarding  the  Hebrew  lan- 
guage, 205,  206. 


Philosophers,  Ionian,  their  conception 
of  evolution,  i,  14.  Of  storms,  323. 
French,  bloom  period  of  the,  ii,  192. 

Philosopher's  stone,  theological  argument 
in  favor  of  the,  i,  397,  398. 

Philosophy,  pagan,  its  influence  on  the 
Church,  i,  31. 
.  Philosophy,  historians  of,  on  the  naming 
:  I       of  animals  by  Adam,  ii,  196. 

Philpotts,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  his  resistance 
to  the  Revised  Version  of  the  New 
Testament,  ii,  388,  note. 

Phineus,  legend  of,  ii,  215. 

Phips,  Lady,  final  resistance  to  the  Sa- 
lem witch  persecution  by,  ii,  153. 

Phocas,  legend  of  a  rock  thrown  at,  ii, 
210. 

Phoenicia,  relation  of  its  theories  of  the 
creation  to  those  of  the  Hebrews,  i,  2, 
21.  To  those  of  the  Greeks,  14,  51. 
Development   of  belief  in  magic   in, 

373: 

Phcenix,  fabulous  accounts  of  the,  i,  33. 
As  a  proof  of  the  resurrection,  35. 
Scepticism  regarding  the,  39. 

Phrygia,  explanatory  myths  in,  ii,  213, 
223. 

Physic.     See  Medicine. 

Physicians,  regulation  of  their  practice  by 
the  Church,  ii,  37.  Classification  of, 
with  sorcerers,  37,  38.  Arabian,  104. 
Charge  of  atheism  against,  104.  Their 
espousal  of  the  safe  side  during  the 
witch  persecution,  119.  Their  atti- 
tude   towards    epidemics    of  hysteria, 

139- 

Physics,  attempts  to  reconcile  the  truths 
of,  with  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  cre- 
ation, i,  19.  From  magic  to,  373-415. 
Effects  of  belief  in  magic  upon,  3S3. 
Theological  opposition  to,  394.  Mod- 
ern development  of,  406-408. 

Physiologus,  the  standard  mediaeval  work 
on  zoology,  i,  32,  33,  35. 

Piacenza,  treatment  of  a  money-lender's 
body  by  the  people  of,  ii,  271. 

Piat,  St.,  his  relics  potent  against  wet 
weather,  i,  344. 

Pictet,  cited,  i,  228,  note. 

Pierrozzi,  his  inscription  above  Galileo's 
remains,  i,  146. 

Pike,  L.  O.,  cited,  ii,  271,  note. 

Pike,  Dr.  Samuel,  his  attack  on  Newton, 
i,  127. 

Pilgrimages,  to  cure  epidemics  of  dia- 
bolic possession,  ii,  13S. 

Pilkington,  on  the  divine  use  of  meteor- 
ological phenomena,  i,  333.  On  exor- 
cism against  storms,  348.  Cited,  333, 
note  ;  348,  note. 

Pinches,  his  Assyrian  researches,  ii,  370. 


INDEX. 


453 


Pinel,  Jean  Baptiste,  his  reform  in  the 
treatment  of  insanity,  ii,  131,  132. 
Honours  paid  by  France  to,  134.  His 
place  in  history,  134,  166.  Effect  of 
his  work  on  Bible  myths,  20S. 

I  ingre,  cited,  i,  172,  note;  174,  note; 
201,  note  ;  202,  note  :  204,  note. 

Pirates  of  the  Bounty,  morality  of  their 
descendants,  i,  311. 

Pisa,  Archbishop  of,  his  machinations 
against  Galileo,  i,  134,  136,  159. 

Pisa,  University  of,  its  attitude  toward 
the  Copernican  theory,  i,  128. 

Pitcairn,  cited,  i,  363,  note. 

Pitra,  cited,  i,  36,  note. 

Pitt-Rivers,  his  discovery  of  prehistoric 
implements  in  Egypt,  i,  299.  Cited, 
281,  note. 

Pius  V,  Pope,  his  decretal  regarding  phy- 
sicians, ii,  37. 

Pius  VI,  Pope,  his  condemnation  of  Isen- 
biehl's  book,  ii,  324. 

Pius  VII,  Pope,  his  sanction  of  the  helio- 
centric theory,  i,  156. 

Pius  VIII,  Pope,  his  approval  of  the 
practice  of  loaning  money  at  interest, 
ii,  283. 

Pius  IX,  Pope,  teachings  of  the  syllabus 
of,  i,  5.  His  opposition  to  scientific 
study,  41.  On  Darwinism,  75.  His 
refusal  to  allow  the  scientific  congress 
to  meet  at  Bologna,  236,  394,  408. 
His  interest  in  the  monastery  of  Le- 
rins,  370.  Letters  of,  in  the  preface  of 
Mislin's  book,  ii,  258.  His  oppositio'n 
to  the  new  interpretation  of  the  Bible, 
368.    List  of  saints  sanctioned  by,  382. 

Plague,  the  great,  of  England,  severity 
of,  ii,  67. 

Plancy,  Collin  de,  cited,  ii,  30,  note  ;  45, 
note  ;  165,  note. 

Planets,  representation  of  the  creation  of, 
i,  12. 

Plants,  Milius's  views  as  to  the  distribu- 
tion of,  i,  47. 

Plateau,  his  experiment  confirming  the 
nebular  hypothesis,  i,  18. 

Platina,  cited,  i,  178,  note;  342,  note; 
345,  note. 

Plato,  his  disapproval  of  the  idea  of  evo- 
lution, i,  14.  His  belief  in  the  fixity 
of  species,  31.  His  conception  of  the 
earth's  sphericity,  91.  His  attempt  to 
explain  storms,  323.  His  influence  on 
scientific  methods,  374.  His  supposed 
opposition  to  freedom  of  opinion,  375, 
note.  His  belief  in  demoniacal  pos- 
session, ii,  100,  101.  His  theory  of 
the  confusion  of  tongues,  173.  On  the 
taking  of  interest,  265.  Mystical  inter- 
pretation of  Greek  myths  by,  293.    His 


speculations  on  numbers,  296.  Cited, 
i,  91,  note  ;  116,  note  ;  ii,  173,  note. 

Platonists  of  the  Renaissance,  influence 
of  the  alleged  writings  of  DionyMus 
the  Areopagite  on,  ii,  315. 

Plays,  miracle,  their  illustration  of  mediae- 
val ideas,  i,  13. 

Ple.sse,  story  of  the  hunters  of,  ii,  216. 

Plieninger,  on  God's  anger  against  the 
Gregorian  calendar,  i,  333. 

Pliny,  his  belief  in  the  antipodes,  i,  102. 
His  failure  to  mention  any  eclipse  at 
the  time  of  the  crucifixion,  173.  His 
attempt  to  explain  storms,  323.  On 
the  character  of  magicians,  382.  On 
the  medicinal  properties  of  saliva,  ii, 
41.  Cited,  i,  172,  note;  173,  note; 
ii,  223,  note. 

Plummer,  cited,  i,  19,  note. 

Plumptre,  Dean  E.  H.,  cited,  i,  120,  note. 

Plumptre,  J.,  his  defence  of  vaccination, 
ii,  58. 

Plunkett,  Mrs.,  cited,  ii,  96,  note. 

Plutarch,  his  opposition  to  the  theory  of 
the  antipodes,  i,  102.  On  the  taking 
of  interest,  ii,  265.     Cited,  i,  174,  note. 

Plymouth  Colony,  plague  among  the 
Indians  before  the  arrival  of,  ii,  85. 

Pococke,  Richard,  on  the  fossils  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  ii,  247. 

Poems,  necessity  of,  to  convey  truth  in 
early  times,  ii,  208. 

Poictiers,  Bishop  of,  trial  of  Grandier  for 
witchcraft  by,  ii,  144. 

Poison,  mediaeval  antidote  against,  ii,  40. 

Polacco,  his  arguments  against  the  Co- 
pernican system  in  his  Anticopernicus 
Catholicus,  i,  145,  146.  On  the  respon- 
sibility for  the  condemnation  of  Gali- 
leo, 145,  164.     Cited,  146,  note. 

Political  economy,  from  Leviticus  to,  ii, 
264-287. 

Polo,  Marco,  explanatory  myth  related 
by,  ii,  211. 

Polycarp,  alleged  epistles  of  Dionysius 
to,  ii,  315. 

Polydektes,  legend  of,  ii,  215. 

Pomegranates  from  the  Dead  Sea,  Seet- 
zen's  examination  of,  ii,  248,  249. 

Pomponatius,  his  doubts  regarding  the 
power  of  devils  over  storms,  i,  354. 
His  protest  against  the  old  theory  of 
insanity,  ii,  122. 

Pont-a-Mousson,  power  over  demons  pos- 
sessed by  a  bell  at,  i,  345. 

Poole  (Polus),  Matthew,  on  the  Deluge, 
i,  230.  His  belief  in  the  existence 
of  Lot's  wife's  statue,  ii,  245.  Cited, 
246,  note. 

Poole,  R.  L.,  cited,  i,  351,  note  ;  ii,  103, 
note  ;  303,  note. 


454 


INDEX. 


Pools,  miraculous  powt  -  :  -    ; 

Poor,  desirability  of  studying  the  evo- 
lution of  modern  methods  of  dealing 
with  the,  i:    :- 

Porson,  his  rejection  of  the  text  from  St. 
John  regarding  the  "  three  witnesses 
- .    His  work  in  literary  criticism, 

i    -ersecution  of,  for  studyir, 
encc        ■    .    3   ;■ 

al,  cited,  ii,  53,  note      5  5    n 
-  Noah,  on  evolution, :.  ~: 
■ 

:»yal.  bones  of  the  Jansenists  dug 
up  and  scattered  at   ii    :•' 
Portugal,   justification   of  her   claim  to 

Brazil,  i.  :    I 
Poseidon,  imprint  of  his  trident  on  the 
Acropolis,  ii,  211. 

-:on,  demoniacal,  from,  to  msan- 
07-134.    Epidemics  of.  112.    Be- 
-. gs  of  a  healthful  scepticism  re-  ' 
garding.  1 16-124.     The  final  struggle 
and    victory    of    science — Pike     and  | 

.    124-134.     Epidemics  of  posses- 
aon,    135-157     -:       i^O-     Beginnings, 
of  helpful  .  regarding    1  =  7- 

163.     rhe       -  ggestions  of  com- 

promise— final  :  -  f  the  sc  - "  - 

tine  view  and  methods.  163—167 
Postillus,  his  endeavour  at  a  comparative 
I     res.  ii.  1  So. 

a  proof  of  man's 
unassisted  developmer.         305. 

1    the   work   of   St.    Thomas 
A    rinas     i,  38a     Cited,    37S,    note; 
:.;"-:.  note. 
Poulet,  his  confession  of  being  a  were- 
wolf, ii,  123 
Powell,  Baden,  his  part  in   _; 

Rez-i-r  -         342 
Powers,  an  order  of  the  second  hierarchy 
of  angels,  i 

--    -    -7 
Praetorins.  cited,  i.  1S2.  note. 

is,   Lake,  the   lake-       -    as    of,   i, 

-  -: 

ieacon,  on  philology  s  con- 
firmation   of  the    Scripturo,    ii.    205. 
.    -        :e. 

sh,  prayers  for  sufferers 
from  jail  fever  in  the.  ii.  B4. 

as,  employment  of  them  to  - 
eleniT 

.  :  ■    note. 
Prest  -         I  of  M  -      -ppi,   its 

endowment  of  a  chair  of  Natui 
ence  as  connected  with   revealed   re- 
g     - 

-  1   the  Associated, 
on  witch  cr. 


Prescriptions  against  insanity,  ii,  102. 

;h.  his  investigation  of  Boucher 
de  Perthes's  discoveries,  i.  273 
Frevjst-Paradol.  cited,  ii,  241.  note. 
Price,  Hilton,  ci: e  -    rote. 

Prideaux,   his   opposition   to   the   theo- 
logical  views    in    philology  [87 
Indication   of  the   position    of  Lot's 
statne    I        245.      Cited,    ;_; 
d  ite, 

_y,  persecution  of,  for  heterodoxy. 
[49,  405.     His  discoveries  in  chem- 
istry, 405.     Cite  :te. 

their  connection  with  the  heal- 
ing art.  ii.  1.     Enicacy  of  their  breath 
or  spittle  against  demons,  102. 
Primum  mobile,  the  ninth  sphere,  i,  II*. 
•'  Prince  of  the  power  of  the  air,"  from 
the,  to  meteorology,  i,  32  j-  37a 
also  Sata>". 
Prince,  the  Rev.  Thomas,  on  the  cause 
of     earthquakes    in    Boston,    i,    366. 
366,  note. 
I  .eories  of  evolution  a: 

■ 
Principalities,  an  order  of  the  third  hier- 
archy rf  ang  1 19. 

.-.  on  sanitary  precautions. 

Prisons,  vileness  of,  in  England,  :     • 
Prisse  d'Avennes,  his  drawings  represent- 
ing   e  tian    figures.    :.     :-'  j 
Cited,    90,    note  ;  265,  n :  te 
note  ;  377,  note. 
Probst-Jesar,  origin  of  the  lake  at,  ii,  214. 
Processions,  employment  of  them  to  gain 
power  over  tie  elements,  i,  3_:_"     ■-_ 
To  avert  pestilence,  ii,  71.     T 
insanity,  112.     Of  flagellants,  to  cure 
the  dancing  epidemic.  :;-• 
Process*  Originate  degH  Untori,  c: 

-t    note. 
Procopius  of  Gaza,  on  the  antipodes,  i, 

104. 
Proctor,  cited,  i,  19.  note  :  204.  note. 
Professors,    university,    not    suffered   to 
.    the  Copernican  theory,  i     : :  - 
Their  treatment  in  Austria,  260.  403- 
Theological   qualifications   in   various 
countries,  319.      Their   treatment    in 
Spain.  40: . 
Professors   of    the   college    at   Beyrout. 

r  dismissal,  i,  S4,  129.  :    ; 
Prometheus,   his    death    announced   hy 
darkness  over  the  earth,  i,  172. 

Mntism.    its    resistance  to  science 
com"  that  of  Catholi:.- 

3,  169.     Its    condemnation 
ng  of  interest,  ii.  2~2-:~: 
Prout,    his    essay    in    the    Bridge 
series,  i,  43. 


INDEX. 


455 


Prowe,  cited,  i,  127,   note  ;    129,  note  ; 

1-4.  note. 

Prussia,  denunciation  of  science  in,  i. 
411.  Dying-out  of  the  theory  of  dem- 
oniacal possession  in,  ii,  126. 

Psalms,  the,  Newton's  views  as  to  their 
authorship,  ii,  310.  Cited,  i,  95,  note  ; 
ii,  68,  note  ;  265,  note. 

Psalters,  illuminated,  their  preservation 
of  medieval  conceptions,  i,  3.  36,  3S3. 

Psellus,  Michael,  on  the  work  of  demons, 
ii,  103,  104. 

Pseudo-Augustine,  his  guess  regarding 
the  distribution  of  animals,  i,  211. 

Psychology,  effect  of  the  study  of,  on  be- 
lief in  miracles,  ii,  65. 

Ptolemaic  theory,  adopted  by  the 
Church,  i,  1 16.  Reasserted  by  the  In- 
quisition and  Pope  Paul  V,  140.  Ef- 
fect of  the  new  cometary  theory  upon, 
202. 

Ptolemy  I,  legends  regarding  the  trans- 
lation of  Hebrew  Scriptures  made  at 
his  command,  ii,  289,  290. 

Ptolemy,  the  astronomer,  his  Geography 
i,  102,  note.  Servetus's  edition  of  it, 
112,  113,  and  note  ;  ii,  237. 

Public  Health  Act,  result  of  the,  ii,  92. 

Public  Opinion,  cited,  ii,  96,  note. 

Puffendorf,  his  victory  in  the  contro- 
versy over  interest-taking,  ii,  277. 

Pugin,  aesthetic  reaction  represented  by, 

ii,  334- 

Punctuation,  rabbinical,  controversy 
over,  ii,  176-179. 

Puritans,  the,  their  development  in  an  un- 
favourable climate,  i,  311.  Misrep- 
resentation of,  in  certain  historical 
manuals,  319.  Development  of  witch 
persecution  among,  360,  361.  Their 
hostility  to  the  taking  of  interest,  ii, 

Pusey,  on  evolution,  i,  76.  His  influence 
on  English  thought,  ii,  334.  His  work 
in  biblical  criticism,  336.  His  adher- 
ence to  the  old  system  of  exegesis, 
33°i  337-  His  hostility  to  the  authors 
of  Essays  and  Reviews,  345,  346. 
Cited,  i,  77,  note  ;  ii,  359,  note. 

Putnam,  Ann,  part  played  by  her  in  the 
Salem  witch  persecution,  ii,  148,  151. 
Her  family's  accusation  against  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Burroughs.  151. 

Pygmalion,  transformation  of  his  statue, 
'ii,  233. 

Pyramid,  the  Great,  engineering  skill 
exhibited  in,  i,  260.  Astronomical 
knowledge  displayed  in  its  construc- 
tion, 261. 

Pyrrha,  legends  of,  ii,  215. 

Pyrrhus,  story  of,  ii,  215. 


Pythagoras,  his  suggestion  of  a  heliocen- 
tric theory,  i,  120. 

Pythagoreans,  their  conception  of  the 
earth's  sphericity,  i,  91.  Their  views 
regarding  comets,  174. 

Quadi,  divine  interposition  in  Marcus 
Aurelius's  battle  against  the,  i,  331. 

de  Quadros,  on  Xavier's  miraculous 
powers,  ii,  12,  17. 

Quakers,  their  efforts  to  reform  the  treat- 
ment of  the  insane,  ii,  133. 

Quaresmio  (Quaresmius),  his  great  work 
on  the  Holy  Land,  ii,  1S6,  239.  Its 
influence,  240.  Cited,  i,  101,  note  ;  ii, 
229,  note  ;  241,  note. 

Quarterly  Review,  cited,  i,  73,  note  ;  206, 
note  ;  ii,  34S,  note. 

Quaternary  period,  evidence  of  man's 
existence  in  the,  i,  270,  274,  275,  27'  . 
27;,  2S2. 

Quatrefages,  on  the  antiquity  of  man,  i, 
2-2.     Cited,  62,  note;  73,  note.   -:~ 
note  ;  283,  note  ;  2S9,  note  ;  291,  note  ; 
294,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Querenghi,  Cardinal,  his  views  regarding 
the  nature  of  Galileo's  condemnation, 
i,  164. 

Quesnay,  his  work  in  political  economy, 
ii,  223.     Cited,  283,  note. 

Quetelet,  cited,  i,  140,  note. 

Quincy,  cited,  i,  367,  note. 

Quinine,  theological  opposition  to  its  use, 
ii.  62. 

Quotations  from  the  Old  Testament  in 
the  New,  recent  treatment  of  the  ques- 
tion, ii,  391. 

Rabanus  Maurus,  his  views  as  to  the  cen- 
tre of  the  earth,  i,  99.  On  comets,  175. 
His  sacred  cosmography,  328.  His 
views  on  science,  376.  Cited,  100,  note; 
329,  note. 

Rabbis  of  Palestine,  foundation  for  the 
oracular  interpretation  of  the  Bible  laid 
by  the,  ii,  300. 

Radziwill,  Prince  Nicolas,  his  belief  in 
the  Dead  Sea  legends,  ii,  235.  His 
failure  to  find  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife, 
262.     Cited,  235,  note. 

Railroads,  evidence  of  divine  displeasure 
against  country  innkeepers,  ii,  2:f. 
Herald  of  Antichrist    i 

Rainbow,  Aristotle's  conclusions  regard- 
ing. ••  330-  Theological  views  regard- 
ing. 33°-    Bacon's  explanation  1 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  on  the  antiquity  of 
man,  i,  254,  259.     Cited,  257,  note. 

Rallaye,  his  attitude  toward  Galileo,  i, 

147- 
Ramba,  transformation  of,  ii,  215. 


456 


INDEX. 


Rambaud,  cited,  i,  36,  note  ;  ii,  39,  note  ; 
42,  note  ;  45,  note  ;  66,  note  ;  88,  note  ; 
95,  note  ;  120,  note  ;  125,  note ;  310, 
note 

Ramsden,  the  Rev.  Dr.,  on  vaccination, 
ii,  58. 

Raoul  Glaber,  cited,  i,  177,  note. 

Rats,  blood  of,  its  use  as  medicine,  ii,  39. 

Raumer,  Carl  von,  his  theory  of  fossils, 
i,  239,  240.  His  investigation  of  the 
Dead  Sea  myths,  ii,  249.  Cited,  i,  182, 
note  ;  ii,  35,  note  ;  36,  note. 

Rauwolf,  Leonhard,  his  travels  in  Pales- 
tine, ii,  238.     Cited,  241,  note. 

Raving,  epidemics  of,  ii,  136,  137. 

Rawlinson,  G.,  cited,  i,  265,  note. 

Rawlinson,  Sir  H.,  his  researches  in  As- 
syria, ii,  370.     Cited,  173,  note. 

Ray,  John,  his  work  on  natural  history, 
i,  42.     Cited,  44,  note. 

Raynaldus,  cited,  i,  178,  note  ;  352,  note. 

Raymundus,  Martinus,  his  attack  on  the 
theory  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  He- 
brew vowel  points,  ii,  176. 

Reasoning,  difference  between  scientific 
and  theological,  i,  202,  203.  Employ- 
ment of  theological  method  of,  in  sci- 
ence, 399-401. 

Reclus,  Elisee,  cited,  i,  19,  note  ;  ii,  222, 
note  ;  223,  note. 

Records  of  the  Past,  cited,  ii,  371,  note. 

Redi,  Francesco,  on  spontaneous  genera- 
tion, i,  41,  42.  His  contributions  to 
natural  history,  393. 

Redruth,  Methodist  chapel  at,  epidemic 
of  hysteria  at,  ii,  163. 

Reformation,  the,  its  influence  on  scien- 
tific progress,  i,  212,  213.  On  the  be- 
lief in  diabolic  activity,  ii,  114, 115, 116. 
On  the  witch  persecution,  141.  On  the 
sacred  theory  of  language,  176,  177. 
On  the  study  of  Hebrew,  179.  On 
belief  in  the  Dead  Sea  legends,  235, 
236.  On  belief  in  the  verbal  inspira- 
tion of  the  Scriptures,  305.  On  literary 
criticism,  314. 

Regino,  Abbot,  his  theory  of  insanity,  ii, 
103. 

Regnault,  Francois,  his  compilation  on 
Palestine,  ii,  236. 

Reil,  his  discovery  of  prehistoric  remains 
in  Egypt,  i,  298. 

Reinach,  cited,  i,  275,  note  ;  291,  note. 

Reindeer,  remains  of,  found  in  caves  of 
England,  i,  276,  277. 

Reinhold,  his  treatment  at  the  University 
of  Wittenberg,  i,  129. 

Reinisch,  cited,  i,  36,  note. 

Reinzer,  his  theory  of  comets,  i,  188,  189. 
Cited,  189,  note. 

Reisch  (or  Reysch),  Gregory,  his  views  on 


the  creation,  i,  26.  On  the  doctrine  of 
the  antipodes,  109.  Cited,  28,  note  ; 
no,  note;  120,  note;  178,  note;  331, 
note  ;  338,  note  ;  ii,  182,  note. 

Reland,  Adrian,  his  treatment  of  the 
story  of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  243  His  service 
to  science,  263.     Cited,  243,  note. 

Relics,  employment  of,  against  storms, 
i,  342.  Miraculous  powers  of,  ii,  25, 
26,  102. 

Religion,  comparative,  its  solution  of 
vital  problems,  ii,  393. 

Remigius,  his  activity  in  the  witch  per- 
secution, i,  358.     Cited,  359,  note. 

Remy,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40. 

Renan,  his  experience  at  St.  Sulpice,  ii, 
361.  His  work  in  biblical  criticism, 
361.  Calumnies  against,  362,  and  note  ; 
363.  On  the  influence  of  Persia  on 
the  Hebrews,  377.  Cited,  i,  3,  note  ; 
107,  note  ;  173,  note  ;  ii,  38,  note  ;  290, 
note  ;  362,  note  ;  376,  note  ;  379,  note. 

Renata.     See  Maria  Renata. 

Rennes,  Bishop  of,  on  the  value  of  thun- 
der-stones, i,  266. 

Renouard,  cited,  ii,  45,  note. 

Re'plique  des  douze  Docteurs,  cited,  ii, 
285,  note. 

Research,  its  place  taken  by  authority 
during  the  Middle  Ages,  i,  132. 

Resurrection,  doctrine  of,  proved  by  the 
phcenix,  i,  35. 

Retreat,  the  name  applied  to  Tuke's  in- 
sane asylum,  ii,  133. 

Retrogression  of  man,  not  general,  i, 
312. 

Reuchlin,  his  Hebrew  grammar,  ii,  179. 
Cited,  182,  note. 

Reusch,  his  rejection  of  the  old  diluvial 
theory,  i,  236.  Cited,  86,  note  ;  125, 
note  ;  132,  note  ;  157,  note  ;  163,  note  ; 
217,  note  ;  236,  note  ;  237,  note  ;  243, 
note  ;  ii,  283,  note  ;  285,  note  ;  332, 
note. 

Reuschle,  cited,  i,  154,  note. 

Reuss,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
328,  329.  Cited,  i,  217,  note  ;  ii,  293, 
note  ;  390,  note. 

Reuter,  cited,  ii,  303,  note. 

Revelation,  book  of,  cited,  i,  102,  note  ; 
340,  note  ;  ii,  68,  note.  See  also  Apoc- 
alypse. 

Revised  Version.     See  Testament. 

Revisers  of  King  James's  version  of  the 
Bible,  their  work,  ii,  291. 

Revivals,  their  relation  to  hysteria,  ii, 
159.  163. 

Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  cited,  i,  151, 
note  ;  410,  note. 

Revue  de  The'rapeutique,  cited,  i,  409, 
note ;  411,  note. 


INDEX. 


457 


Reynolds,  on  the  Fourth  Gospel,  ii,  386. 

Reysch.     See  Reisch. 

Rhea,  her  punishment  of  offenders,  ii, 
215. 

Rheims,  Council  of,  interdiction  of  study 
of  law  and  physic  by,  ii.  36. 

Rheticus,  his  treatment  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Wittenberg,  i,  129. 

Rheumatism,  mediaeval  cure  for,  ii,  39. 

Rhine,  epidemic  of  diabolic  possession 
in    the    region    of  the   lower,  ii,  137, 

138. 

Rhinoceros,  its  identity  with  the  unicorn, 
i,  40.  Remains  of,  found  in  caverns, 
270,  271,  277. 

Rhodes,  Dr.,  his  cure  of  possessed  per- 
sons, ii,  165. 

Rhodes,  J.  F.,  cited,  ii,  341,  note  ;  367, 
note  ;  368,  note. 

Rialle,  G.  de,  cited,  ii,  213,  note. 

Rib,   the  missing,  theory  regarding,   ii, 

53,  54- 

Ricciardi,  his  dictation  of  a  preface  for 
Galileo's  Dialogo,  i,  140.  His  punish- 
ment, 143. 

Riccioli,  Father,  on  the  arguments  for 
and  against  the  Copernican  theory,  i, 
154. 

Richard,  Abbe,  his  exhibition  of  flint 
knives  used  by  Joshua,  ii,  253. 

Richard,  F.  M.  B.,  Archbishop  of  Paris, 
his  praise  of  Dr.  James's  refutation  of 
Darwinism,  i,  75. 

Richelieu,  Cardinal,  his  encouragement 
of  the  persecution  of  Grandier  for 
witchcraft,  ii,  144. 

Ricker,  O.  S.  B.,  cited,  ii,  36,  note. 

Riddle,  his  attempt  to  give  the  chro- 
nology of  various  prehistoric  periods, 
i,  283. 

Ridley,  Bishop,  his  objection  to  the  bap- 
tism of  bells,  i,  348,  note. 

Rigollot,  his  discovery  of  prehistoric  im- 
plements, i,  273. 

Rilliet,  cited,  i,  113,  note. 

Rink,  cited,  i,  275,  note. 

Riolan,  his  endeavour  to  find  the  resur- 
rection bone,  ii,  52.  His  treatment  of 
an  alleged  possessed  person,  142. 

Ritter,  his  investigation  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  254,  255.  Cited,  218,  note ; 
222,  note  ;  223,  note  ;  243,  note. 

Rivers  of  England,  evidence  of  their  for- 
mer connection  with  those  of  the  Con- 
tinent, i,  278. 

Robert-Houdin,  employment  of,  by  the 
French  Government  to  out-juggle  the 
Arabs,  ii,  155. 

Roberts,  W.  W.,  on  the  condemnation  of 
Galileo,  i,  165,  217,  note.  Cited,  158, 
note  ;  163,  note  ;  166,  note  ;  217,  note. 


Robinet,  development  of  evolutionary 
theories  by,  i,  59. 

Robinson,  Dr.  E.,  on  Felix  Fabri,  ii,  232. 
His  investigations  in  Palestine,  249, 
250,  254.  His  services  to  science, 
263.  His  opinion  of  Sir  John  Man- 
deville's  honesty,  231,  note.  Cited, 
222,  note  ;  231,  note  ;  233,  note  ;  254, 
note  ;   260,  note. 

Roch,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  42. 

Rochdale,  Archdeacon  Wilson's  lectures 
at,  i,  85. 

Rocks,  myths  inspired  by,  ii,  210. 

Rodriguez,  Simon,  recovery  of,  at  the 
sight  of  Xavier,  ii,  7. 

Roger,  Eugene,  account  of  his  travels  in 
Palestine,  i,  38,  100  ;  ii,  240.  Signs  of 
a  critical  spirit  shown  by,  i,  39.  On 
the  centre  of  the  earth,  100.  Cited, 
40,  note  ;  100,  note ;  ii,  213,  note  ; 
241,  note. 

Rogers,  Charles,  cited,  ii,  88,  note. 

Rogers,  his  objection  to  the  baptism  of 
bells,  i,  348,  note. 

Roget,  his  essay  in  the  Bridgewater 
series,  i,  43. 

Rohrbacher,  on  the  work  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  i,  3S0.     Cited,  381,  note. 

Roman  Breviary,  cited,  ii,  71,  note. 

Romans,  Epistle  to  the,  cited,  i,  no, 
note  ;  120,  note. 

Rome,  value  of  the  relics  at,  ii,  29. 
Theory  regarding  the  cause  of  plagues 
in,  67,  70.  Plagues  of  1680  and  1522 
at,  72.  Sanitary  condition  of,  81. 
Early  theories  of  insanity  in,  98,  99. 
Imprint  of  Christ's  foot  at,  212.  The 
taking  of  interest  in,  264,  265.  Nie- 
buhr's  studies  in  the  history  of,  339. 

Romulus,  supernatural  announcement  of 
his  death,  i,  173. 

Rope,  the  hangman's  use  of  fibres  of,  as 
medicine,  ii,  39. 

Rosalia,  St.,  her  relics  at  Palermo,  ii,  29. 

Roscher,  cited,  ii,  269,  note  ;  285,  note. 

Rosellini,  his  study  of  Egyptian  monu- 
ments, i,  257. 

Rosenberg,  protection  of  church  at  by  a 
lightning-rod,  i,  367.  Legend  of  a 
stone  near,  ii,  216. 

Rose  tree,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Roskoff,  cited,  i,  352,  note  ;  ii,  75,  note. 

Rosse,  Lord,  on  nebular  masses,  i,  18. 

Rosseeuw  St.-Hilaire,  cited. 

Roth,  cited,  ii,  46,  note  ;  53,  note  ;  54, 
note  ;  55,  note. 

Rotherhithe,  curate  of,  on  the  judgment 
of  God,  ii,  286. 

Rothery,  the  Rev.  Mr.,  his  opposition  to 
vaccination,  ii,  59. 

Rouen,  picture  of  a  priest's  struggle  with 


458 


INDEX. 


the   devil  in    the  gallery  at,   ii,   112, 

note. 
Rouen,  Parliament  of,  its  condemnation 

of  sorcerers,  ii,  124. 
Rougemont,  on  Darwinism,  i,  74.     His 

theory   regarding    the    earth,   i,    242. 

Cited,  77,  note. 
Royal    Guards    at    London,   death   rate 

among,  ii,  91. 
Royal  Society,  formation  of  the,  i,  41. 
Roze,  Chevalier,  his  conduct  during  the 

plague  at  Marseilles,  ii,  86. 
Ruge,  cited,  i,  102,  note  ;  112,  note. 
Rugen,  fate  of  the  priestess  of  Hertha  in, 

ii,  213. 
Ruskin,  aesthetic  reaction  represented  by, 

ii,  334- 
Russell,  cited,  ii,  61,  note  ;  62,  note. 
Russia,  prevention  of  the  peasants  of, 

from  eating  potatoes,  ii,  285. 
Russo-Greek  Church,  its  attitude  toward 

geological  truths,  i,  236. 
Riitimeyer,  his  conclusions  regarding  the 

lake-dwellers,  i,  294. 
Rutt,  cited,  i,  404,  note. 
Rydberg,  cited,  i,  120,  note  ;  338,  note  ; 

342,  note  ;  344,  note  ;  392,  note  ;  398, 

note;    ii,    30,   note;   42,   note;    113, 

note. 
Ryle,  H.  E.,  on  the  attempted  reconcili- 
ation of  Genesis  and  science,  i,  19,  21. 

Cited,   24,    note  ;    S7,    note  ;    ii,    390, 

note. 

Sacco,  his  defence  of  vaccination,  ii,  58. 
Sachs,  cited,  i,  31,  note. 
Sacquarah,  list  of  kings  at,  i.  258. 
Sacred  books,  real  value  and  truth  of,  i, 

Saint  Acheul,  discovery  of  prehistoric  im- 
plements at,  i,  273. 

Saint-Andre,  his  book  against  the  theory 
of  demoniacal  possession,  ii,  124. 

Saint  Angelo,  how  the  mausoleum  of 
Hadrian  became  the  castle  of,  ii,  70. 

Saint  Bride's  Church,  opposition  to  light- 
ning-rod by  authorities  of,  i,  367. 

Saint  Germain,  Archceological  Museum 
of,  prehistoric  engravings  in,  i,  275, 
note. 

Saint-Hilaire.  See  Barthelemy  St.- 
Hilaire,  Geoffroy  St.-Hilaire. 
Rosseeuvv  St  -HlLAIRE. 

Saint  Honorat,  Island  of.     See  Lerins, 

MONASTERY  OF. 

Saint  John  of  Jerusalem,   Order  of,  its 

establishment,  ii,  3. 
Saint  John's  Day,  the  wild  revels  of,  ii, 

137. 

Saint  Louis  Christian  Advocate,  cited,  i, 
316,  note. 


Saint  Luke's  Hospital  in  London, 
wretchedness  of,  ii,  132.  Treatment 
of  the  insane  in,  133. 

Saint  Mark's,  at  Venice.  See  San 
Marco. 

Saint-Martin,  Vivien  de,  cited,  i,  91, 
note  ;  93,  note  ;  110,  note. 

Saint-Medard,  cures  wrought  at  the  cem- 
etery of,  ii,  24,  155. 

Saint-Nazaire,  church  of,  its  destruction 
by  lightning,  i,  368. 

Saint  Paul's  Cathedral,  opposition  to 
lightning-rod  by  authorities  of,  i,  367. 

Saint  Peter  ad  Vincula,  church  of,  monu- 
ment to  St.  Sebastian  in,  ii,  72. 

Saint  Petersburg,  Archbishop  of,  alleged 
miraculous  cure  of,  by  Father  Ivan,  ii, 
22,  23,  note. 

Saint-Pol-de-Leon,  imprints  of  the  dev- 
il's claws  at,  ii,  212. 

Saint  Roch,  church  of,  in  Paris,  epidemic 
of  hysterics  in,  ii,  157. 

Saint  Sylvester,  bestowal  of  the  Papal 
Order  of,  on  Dr.  James,  i,  75. 

Saint  Thomas,  church  of,  at  Strasburg, 
bodies  preserved  in,  ii,  10,  note. 

Saint  Vitus's  dance,  ii,  138.  Diminished 
frequency  of,  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  139. 

Saisset,  cited,  i,  62,  note ;  136,  note ; 
153,  note  ;  391,  note. 

Sakya  Muni.     See  Buddha. 

Saladin,  physiological  wonders  in  the 
time  of,  ii,  53. 

Salagrama,  transformation  of,  ii,  215. 

Salamanca,  Council  of,  its  decree  against 
Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 

Salamanca,  University  of,  its  attitude 
toward  the  Copernican  theory,  i,  128  ; 
and  toward  astronomical  discoveries, 
133.  Its  exclusion  of  the  Newtonian 
system  from  its  curriculum,  155,  156, 
408. 

Salamander,  fabulous  accounts  of  the,  i, 
33.    Roger's  experiments  with  the,  39. 

Salem,  insanity  during  witch  persecution 
in,  ii,  121.  The  witch  persecution  in, 
127,  147-154- 

Salerno,  School  of,  development  of  med- 
icine at,  ii,  33,  37,  104.  Use  of  relics 
at,  41. 

Salicetus,  his  influence  on  medical  sci- 
ence, ii,  104. 

Salignac,  Bartholomew  de,  on  the  won- 
ders of  the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  236.  Cited, 
237,  note. 

Salisbury,  Lord,  cited,  i,  408,  note. 

Saliva,  medicinal  properties  of,  ii,  41. 

Salmasius,  the  propriety  of  interest-tak- 
ing supported  by,  ii,  276.  Cited,  277, 
note. 


INDEX. 


459 


Salmeron,   on  the    date   of  creation,  i, 

253- 

Saloniki,  legend  of  the  enchanted  col- 
umns at,  ii,  217. 

Salt,  formations  of,  by  the  Dead  Sea,  ii, 
221,  224. 

Salt  Lake,  of  Utah,  explanatory  myths 
regarding,  ii,  214. 

Salve  against  goblin  nocturnal  visitors, 
prescription  for,  ii,  39. 

Salzburg,  Bishop  of,  his  persecution  of 
witches,  ii,  75.  Council  of,  its  decree 
against  money-lenders,  268. 

Samaria,  the  bewitching  of  the  people  of, 
by  Simon  the  Magician,  ii,  136.  Sig- 
nification   of    Isaiah's    reference     to, 

295. 

Sampson,  Agnes,  aid  in  childbirth  given 
by,  ii,  63. 

Samson,  origin  of  the  story  of,  ii,  20S. 
Identification  of  the  localities  of  his 
exploits,  i,  38  ;  ii,  240. 

Samson,  Abbot,  his  account  of  miracles, 
ii,  23.     Cited,  25,  note. 

Samuel,  his  argument  to  Saul  used  against 
the  Jews  and  the  Huguenots,  ii,  138. 

Samuel,  book  of,  cited,  ii,  6S,  note  ;  286, 
note. 

Samuell,  cited,  i,  399,  note. 

San  Chan,  death  of  Xavier  in,  ii,  6. 

Sanchez,  his  casuistry,  i,  60. 

Sanctity,  filthiness  an  evidence  of,  ii,  69. 

Sanday,  his  Bampton  Lectures  on  Inspi- 
ration, ii,  357,  358.  On  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  386.  Cited,  290,  note  ;  294, 
note  ;  297,  note  ;  332,  note. 

Sanders,  Nicholas,  his  argument  against 
the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  274. 

Sands,  Bishop,  on  the  taking  of  interest, 
ii,  275.     Cited,  277,  note. 

Sandys,  Archbishop,  his  belief  regarding 
eclipses,  i,  173.  His  hostility  to  the 
baptism  of  bells,  348,  note.  Cited, 
174.  note. 

San  Felice,  Cardinal,  his  activity  during 
the  cholera  plague  in  Naples,  ii,  80. 

Sanger,  Sister  Maria  Renata.  See  Maria 
Renata. 

Sanitation,  theological  view  of,  ii,  67-81. 
Results  of  a  lack  of  proper,  69,  70, 
82-88.  Gradual  decay  of  theological 
views  regarding,  82-88.  Triumph  of 
sanitary  science,  88-93.  Effect  of,  on 
death  rate,  91-93.  Relation  of  sani- 
tary science  to  religion,  93-95. 

San  Marco,  at  Venice,  mosaics  in,  i,  13. 
Protection  of  tower  of,  by  a  lightning- 
rod,  367. 

Sanskrit,  beginning  of  the  study  of,  ii, 
191.  Effect  of  the  discovery  of,  193, 
194. 


Santa  Fe,  Father  Pablo  de,  on  Xavier's 

alleged  miracles,  ii,  12. 
Santarem,  cited,  i,  95,  note  ;  98,  note  ; 

100,  note  ;  i?7,  note. 
Sanuto,  Marino,  his  maps,  i,  99. 
San  Yuste,  the  refuge  of  Charles  V,  i, 

176. 
Sarah  and   Hagar,  Luther  on   St.  Paul's 

allegorical  use  of  the  story  of,  ii,  305. 
Sargon,  similarity  between  the  story  of, 

and  that  of  Moses,  ii,  372,  375. 
Sarzec,  his  researches  in  Assyria,  ii,  370. 
Satan,  proof  of  his  loss  of  glory,  i,  35. 

Held  to  be  a  dragon,  38.     Ascription 

of  meteorological  phenomena  to,  323- 

372.  His  interference  in  magic,  382. 
Charge  of  unlawful  compact  with,  385, 
386.  Bacon's  arguments  against  his 
power,  388.  His  interference  with  the 
mining  industry,  402-404.  Attribu- 
tion of  disease  to,  ii,  27-30.  Of  pesti- 
lence, 72,  73.  His  agency  in  causing 
mental  disease,  97-167.  Representa- 
tion of,  in  popular  dramas,  in,  128. 
His  disappearance  from  modern  mir- 
acle plays,  129,  note.  His  modes  of 
entering  into  the  possessed,  120. 
Change  in  the  methods  of  his  influ- 
ence, 135.  Attribution  of  invention 
of  Sanskrit  to,  194.  Imprints  of,  on 
stones,  212. 

Saturn,  its  place  in  the  spheres,  i,  118. 

de  Saulcy,  his  investigation  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  252,  253,  256.  Condition  in 
which  he  found  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife, 
263.     Cited,  222,  note  ;  254,  note. 

Savi,  Father,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  363. 

Savings  institutions,  belief  in  the  sinful- 
ness of,  ii,  264. 

Savonarola,  his  adherence  to  the  alle- 
gorical method  of  interpreting  Scrip- 
ture, ii,  302. 

Saxon  Switzerland,  legends  of  the,  ii, 
216. 

Saxony,  Elector  of,  the  ringing  of  bells 
against  storms  prohibited  by  the,  i,  348. 

Sayce,  his  investigation  of  the  Chaldean 
legends  of  the  Deluge,  i,  238.  On  the 
date  of  Mena's  reign,  259.  On  Egyp- 
tian art,  261.  On  the  evidence  of 
Assyriology  regarding  the  antiquity  of 
man,  264.  His  reading  of  Assyrian 
inscriptions,  2,  20  ;  ii,  170.  On  the 
story  of  the  Tower  of  Babel,  171.  His 
work  in  philology,  203.  In  Assyri- 
ology, i,  51  ;  ii,  370,  372,  373.  On  the 
change  of  colour  in  the  Nile  waters, 
375.  Cited,  i,  3,  note  ;  25,  note  ;  53, 
note  ;  91,  note  ;  265,  note  ;  302,  note  ; 

373,  note  ;  374,  note  ;  ii,  3,  note ;  2S, 


460 


INDEX. 


note  ;  32,  note  ;  100,  note  ;  173,  note  ; 
182,  note  ;  192,  note  ;  196,  note  ;  371, 
note  ;  374,  note  ;  376,  note ;  377,  note  ; 

334,  note. 

Scaliger,  Joseph,  on  the  date  of  creation, 
i,  253.  On  the  study  of  chronology, 
254.     Cited,  256,  note. 

Scaliger,  Julius  Caesar,  on  the  old  beliefs 
regarding  comets,  i,  178,  197. 

Scaligers,  the,  their  relation  to  the 
Church,  ii,  314. 

Scandinavia,  myths  of,  ii,  211,  2 16.  Im- 
prints on  stones  in,  212. 

Scarlet  fever,  mortality  resulting  from,  i, 

39°- 
Schaff,  Rev.  Dr.,  effect  of  his  studies  on 

Bible  myths,  ii,  258.     His  account  of 

the  pillar  of  salt  by  the  Dead  Sea,  259. 

His   service  to   science,    263.     Cited, 

222,  note  ;  260,  note  ;  309,  note. 
Schegg,  Peter,  his    attitude   toward  the 

story  of  Lot's  wife's  statue,  ii,  255,  256. 

Cited,  257,  note. 
Scheiffle,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 
Scheiner,  his  discovery  of  the  sun's  spots, 

i,  133. 
Schellen,  cited,  i,  19,  note. 
Schenkel,  cited,  ii,  223,  note. 
Scherr,  Johannes,  cited,    ii,  121,   note  ; 

157,  note. 
Scheuchzer,  his  theory  of  the  Deluge,  i, 

228.     His  edition  of  the   Bible,   228. 

On  God's  employment  of  the  elements, 

335.  Cited,  228,  note.  His  Kupfer- 
Bibel,  cited,  ii,  237,  note. 

Schickhart,  his  sermon  on  comets,  i,  184. 

Cited,  184,  note. 
Schlegel,    F.,   his   classification  of  lan- 
guages, ii,  195.    His  work  in  philology, 

200. 
Schleicher,  his  work  in  philology,  ii,  203. 
Schleiermacher,  his    characterization    of 

Spinoza,  ii,  318. 
Schlotheim,  his  investigation  of  fossils,  i, 

230. 
Schmerling,  his  explorations  of  caverns  in 

Belgium,  i,  270,  271. 
Schmidt,  Julian,  cited,  i,  404,  note. 
Schmieder,  cited,  i,  399,  note. 
Schnedermann,  cited,  ii,  182,  note. 
Schneider,  cited,  i,  392,  note. 
Scholasticism,   its    effect  on   Albert    the 

Great,   i,  377.     On  Vincent  of  Beau- 

vais,  379. 
Scholl,  cited,  i,  95,  note. 
Schonborn,    J.    P.  von,    Archbishop    of 

Mayence,  witch  persecution   checked 

by,  i,  35S. 
Schools,  technical,  foundation  of,  i,  412- 

415.     Charity,    death    rate   in,   ii,  92. 

Theological,  the  character  of  addresses 


before,  185.  Rabbinical,  evolution  of 
a  sacred  science  in,  292. 

Schott,  on  the  causes  of  thunder,  i,  362. 
Cited,  363,  note. 

Schrader,  his  work  in  deciphering  an- 
cient records,  i,  20,  51.  His  investi- 
gation of  Chaldean  legends  of  the 
Deluge,  238.  Cited,  3,  note  ;  8,  note  ; 
53,  note  ;  238,  note  ;  ii,  173,  note  ;  371, 
note  ;  374,  note. 

Schroder,  cited,  i,  117,  note;  ii,  384, 
note. 

Schubert,  his  theory  of  creation,  i,  242. 

Schuckford,  cited,  ii,  196,  note. 

Schund,  Dr.,  on  Darwinism,  i,  73,  74. 
Cited,  i,  77,  note. 

Schiirer,  cited,  ii,  386,  note. 

Schwerin,  legend  of  boulders  near,  ii, 
216. 

Schwimmer,  cited,  i,  348,  note. 

Science,  development  of  sacred,  i,  6,  26, 
33.  Scepticism  among  theologians  re- 
garding, 38.  Belief  in  its  antagonism 
to  religion,  167.  Its  effect  on  re- 
ligion, 113,  168.  Phases  of  theological 
attack  upon,  218.  Influence  of  the 
establishment  of  Christianity  upon, 
375.  37°-  How  regarded  during  the 
Middle  Ages,  375,  376,  381.  Mystic, 
its  development,  395-398.  Modern 
prejudice  against,  406,  411,  412.  Its 
co-operation  with  religion,  ii,  263.  Sa- 
cred, development  of,  in  the  rabbinical 
schools,  292. 

Scientia  Scientiarum,  cited,  i,  73,  note. 

Scientific  atmosphere,  its  effect  on  tradi- 
tional opinions,  ii,  393. 

Scilla,  his  geological  investigations,  i, 
215. 

Scoffern,  cited,  ii,  39,  note  ;  49,  note. 

Scorpions,  generation  of,  i,  55. 

Scot,  Reginald,  the  burning  of  his  trea- 
tise on  witchcraft,  i,  360.  Cited,  ii, 
119,  note. 

Scotland,  early  civilization  in,  i,  306. 
Witch  persecution  in,  361,  363.  Op- 
position to  inoculation  in,  ii,  56  ;  to 
the  use  of  anaesthetics  in,  62,  63.  The 
plague  in,  87,  88.  Denunciation  of  the 
use  of  fanning  mills  in,  285.  Recent 
progress  of  the  higher  criticism  in, 
360. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  nesthetic  reaction  rep- 
resented by,  ii,  334.     Cited,  2S6,  note. 

Scott,  the  Rev.  W.,  cited,  ii,  167,  note. 

Scotus  Erigena.     See  Erigena. 

Scripture,  literal  acceptance  of,  i,  3,  10, 
25,  26,  32.  Its  alleged  confliction  with 
the  theory  of  gravitation,  16.  Its  al- 
leged conformity  with  the  conclusions 
of  science,    18.     The    source    of    all 


INDEX. 


461 


knowledge,  25.  Origin  of  many  Chris- 
tian dogmas  not  to  be  found  in,  31. 
Hebrew,  its  influence  on  the  study  of 
nature,  32.  Study  of  the  formation  of 
the  canon  of,  ii,  388.  See  also  Bible 
and  Testament. 

Scrofula,  cure  of,  by  king's  touch,  ii, 
46. 

Sculpture,  cathedral,  its  preservation  of 
theology,  i,  1,  3,  and  note,  II,  36.  Its 
embodiment  of  the  fear  of  magic,  383. 
Of  ideas  of  Satan,  ii,  135. 

Sculpture  in  early  Egypt,  i,  260,  261. 

Searle,  G.  M.,  cited,  i,  88,  note. 

Sebastian,  St.,  value  of  his  relics,  ii,  29. 
Plague  caused  by  the  wrath  of,  72.  In- 
tercession of,  against  the  plague,  87. 

Sebillot,  cited,  ii,  211,  note  ;  21S,  note. 

Secchi,  Father,  his  pendulum  experiment, 

i,  157- 

Secondary  causes,  doctrine  of,  con- 
demned by  the  Church,  i,  56. 

Sedgwick,  denunciation  of  him  as  an 
infidel,  i,  223.  His  Life  and  Letters, 
cited,  87,  note  ;  225,  note. 

See,  Prof.,  attack  of  theologians  on,  i, 
409,  410. 

Seetzen,  Ulrich,  his  investigation  into 
the  Dead  Sea  myths,  ii,  248,  249,  254. 
Cited,  254,  note. 

Segor,  signification  of  the  name,  ii,  229. 

Segor,  Bishop  of,  on  the  permanence  of 
Lot's  wife,  ii,  227. 

Seguier,  his  opposition  to  the  witch  per- 
secution, ii,  123. 

Segur,  on  Darwinism,  i,  73,  81.  Cited, 
77,  note. 

Self-mutilation,  Origen  on,  ii,  297. 

Semelaigne,  cited,  ii,  99,  note ;  106, 
note  ;   136,  note. 

Sender,  his  attempt  at  compromise  be- 
tween scientific  and  theological  views 
regarding  comets,  i,  205. 

Seneca,  his  failure  to  mention  any  eclipse 
at  the  time  of  the  crucifixion,  i,  173. 
His  declaration  regarding  comets,  178, 
197,  204.  His  attempt  to  explain 
storms,  323.  On  the  taking  of  interest, 
ii,  265.     Cited,  i,  172,  note  ;  173,  note. 

Sennacherib,  thunderbolts  employed  to 
destroy,  i,  333- 

Sennert,  Andreas,  on  the  divine  origin 
of  Hebrew,  ii,  185.     Cited,  188,  note. 

Sens,  Council  of,  its  condemnation  of 
Abelard,  ii,  302. 

Septuagint,  myths  regarding,  ii,  2S9,  290. 

Seraphim,  an  order  of  the  first  hierarchy 

of  angels,  i,  119. 
Sermon    on    the    Mount,    alleged    con- 
demnation of  usury  in,  ii,  265. 
Serpent,  reason  for  the  creation  of,  i,  28. 


Condition  of,  before  the  fall  of  Adam, 
29,  30.  Fabulous  accounts  of,  33.  Its 
original  form,  221.  Excommunication 
of,  ii,  113.  Influence  on  belief  in  dem- 
on iacal  possession  of  the  story  of  Sa- 
tan's entrance  into,  113.  Region  of 
the  Dead  Sea  infested  by,  237.  Mys- 
tic significance  of  its  condemnation  to 
eat  dust,  299. 
de  Serres,  his  exploration  of  caverns  in 

France,  i,  270. 
Servetus,  his  statement  of  geographical 
truth  employed  against  him  by  Calvin, 
i,   112,   113;    ii,   237.     His  edition  of 
Ptolemy's  Geography,  i,  113.     His  edi- 
tion of  I'tolemy,  cited,  ii,  237,  note. 
Settele,  Canon,  his  work    on    astronomy 
accepting   the   Copernican    system,    i, 
156. 
Seven,  mystic  virtues  of  the  number,  i, 

6,  50,  396  ;  ii,  296,  300. 
Seventy-two,  mystical  theories  regarding 

the  number,  i,  396. 
Sewall,  Justice,   his   sorrow    for   having 

condemned  witches  to  death,  ii,  154. 
Shakespeare,  on  the  portent  of  heavenly 
bodies,  i,    176,    181.     His    allusion    to 
madmen,   ii,    129  ;    to   the   taking   of 
interest,  275.     Cited,  i,  176,  note  ;  ii, 
129,  note  ;  277,  note. 
Shaler,  influence  of  Agassiz  on,  i,  69. 
Shamanism,  a  stage  in  man's  religious 

development,  i,  321. 
Sharp,  G.,  cited,  ii,  139,  note. 
Sharpe,  S.,  cited,  i,  95,  note  ;  120,  note  ; 

ii,  3,  note  ;  376,  note. 
Sharpe,  T.,  cited,  ii,  III,  note. 
Sheep,  description  of,  among  the  animals 

of  Holy  Scripture,  i,  40. 
Shell-heaps  of  Denmark,  remains  of  pre- 
historic man  found  in,  i,  292. 
Shetland  Isles,  epidemic  ol  convulsions 

in,  ii,  157. 
Shew-bread,  mystic  significance  of,  i,  94  ; 

ii,  294. 
Shields,  C.  W.,  cited,  i,  128,  note  ;  129, 
note;  148,  note;  210,  note;  234,  note  ; 
237,  note  ;  243,  note. 
Shinar,  building  of  the  Tower  of  Babel 

on  the  plain  of,  ii,  171. 
Short's  Lexicon,  cited,  ii,  136,  note. 
Shrubs,  transformation  of  living   beings 

into,  ii,  219. 
Shuckford,  Dr.,  on    the  naming   of  the 

animals  by  Adam,  ii,  195. 
Shunamite    damsel,    allegorical    signifi- 
cance of,  ii,  298. 
Shuttleworth,    Bishop,   his    epigram    on 

Buckland,  i,  232. 
Siam,  imprint  of  Buddha's  feet  on  stones 
in,  ii,  211. 


462 


INDEX. 


Sickness,  the  sweating,  mortality  during, 
ii,  67.     Cause  of,  82. 

Siddim,  legend  of  the  beautiful  valley  of, 
ii,  223.  Scepticism  regarding  the  sink- 
ing of  the  valley,  246.  Attempt  to 
save  the  legends  of,  260. 

Siena,  Cathedral  of,  its  protection  by  a 
lightning-rod,  i,  368. 

Sierra  Nevada,  its  late  elevation,  i,  280. 

Sievers,  his  article  on  philology  in  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  ii,  193. 

Sighart,  J.,  cited,  i,  378,  note. 

Sight,  mystical  theory  regarding,  i,  396. 

"  Signs  and  wonders,"  from,  to  law  in 
the  heavens,  i,  171-208. 

Sigwart,  cited,  i,  154,  note. 

Sdberschlag,  J.,  his  attempt  to  base  geol- 
ogy upon  the  Deluge,  i,  243. 

Silliman,  on  evolution,  i,  65.  Annoy- 
ance of  him  by  theologians,  223,  271. 
His  work  at  Yale,  412. 

SiHiman's  Journal,  cited,  i,  70,  note ; 
224,  note. 

Siloam,  miraculous  powers  of  the  pool 
of,  ii,  26. 

Silvia,  St.,  on  the  salt  statue  of  Lot's 
wife,  ii,  227.     Cited,  228,  note. 

Simon  the  Magician,  bewitching  of  the 
people  of  Samaria  by,  ii,  136. 

Simon  Stylites,  St.,  filthiness  of,  ii,  69. 

Simon,  Sir  John,  cited,  ii,  95,  note. 

Simon,  Jules,  his  early  relations  with 
Renan,  ii,  361  ;  362,  note. 

Simon,  Richard,  his  position  in  the  con- 
troversy regarding  the  divine  origin  of 
the  Hebrew  vowel  points,  ii,  178.  His 
attempt  to  defend  the  taking  of  inter- 
est, 278.  His  critical  history  of  the 
Old  Testament,  319,  320.  Cited,  321, 
note. 

Simpson,  Sir  J.  Y.,  his  advocacy  of  the 
use  of  anaesthetics,  ii,  62,  63.  Denun- 
ciation of  his  plan,  63.  Cited,  61, 
note  ;  236,  note. 

Simrock,  K.,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Sin,  creation  of  noxious  creatures  ac- 
counted for  by,  i,  28.  Opinion  of  Dr. 
Grew,  42. 

Sinai,  Mount,  language  used  by  God  on, 
ii,  169.  Reason  for  Moses's  delay  on, 
197.  Imprint  of  Moses's  body  near, 
211. 

Sipylos,  explanation  of  a  crater  near,  ii, 
214.  Transformation  of  Niobe  to  a 
rock  on,  215,  216. 

Sirens,  Kircher's  representation  of,  i,  38. 

Sismondi,  cited,  ii,  34,  note  ;  270.  note. 

Sistine  Chapel,  Michael  Angelo's  fres- 
coes in,  i,  11,  12. 

Siva,  representation  of,  i,  11.  Myths  re- 
garding, ii,  215. 


Six,  mystic  significance  of  the  number,  i, 
6,  26  ;  ii,  296. 

Sixtus  V.  Pope,  revised  list  of  saints  sanc- 
tioned by,  ii,  3S2. 

Skertchley,  cited,  i,  280,  note. 

Skulls,  human,  evidence  furnished  by 
them  regarding  primitive  man,  i,  290, 
291. 

Slavery,  scriptural  justification  of,  its  ef- 
fect on  the  old  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  ii,  368. 

Slavonic  Scriptures,  opposition  to  their 
revision,  ii,  309,  310. 

Slavs,  their  development  of  powerful  civ- 
ilizations, i,  311. 

Sleep,  entrance  of  Satan  into  human 
bodies  during,  ii,  120. 

Sleidan,  on  the  consecration  of  bells,  i, 
346.     Cited,  346,  note. 

Sloth,  difficulty  of  explaining  its  presence 
in  South  America,  i,  48. 

Smallpox,  theological  opposition  to  the 
use  of  inoculation  against,  ii,  55-57  I 
to  the  use  of  vaccination,  58.  Epi- 
demic of,  at  Montreal,  60,  61.  Deaths 
from  92. 

Smith,  Adam,  his  work  in  political  econ- 
omy, ii,  283. 

Smith,  Eli,  his  investigations  in  Pales- 
tine, ii,  249.  His  services  to  science, 
263. 

Smith,  George,  his  work  in  Assyriology, 
i,  2,  20,  51.  His  discovery  of  the  Chal- 
dean legends  of  the  Deluge,  237,  238. 
Reading  of  Assyrian  inscriptions  by, 
ii,  170.  His  researches  in  Assyria, 
370.  Cited,  i,  3,  note  ;  8,  note  ;  19, 
note  ;  25,  note  ;  53,  note  ;  90,  note ; 
238,  note  ;  287,  note  ;  ii,  3,  note  ;  100, 
note  ;  173,  note  ;  176,  note  ;  371,  note  ; 
374,  note  ;  376,  note  ;  377,  note. 

Smith,  Henry,  his  condemnation  of  the 
taking  of  interest,  ii,  274. 

Smith,  Henry  Preserved,  his  work  in  bib- 
lical criticism,  ii,  370.  Cited,  293.  note  ; 
297,  note  ;  309,  note. 

Smith,  Pye,  denunciation  of  him  as  an 
infidel,  i,  223.     Cited,  223,  note. 

Smith,  W.  Robertson,  his  persecution  by 
Protestant  authorities,  i,  168,  318  ;  ii, 
259.  His  appointment  to  a  professor- 
ship at  Cambridge,  359.  Cited,  207, 
note  ;  21S,  note  ;  333,  note  ;  386, 
note. 

Smith,  William,  his  influence  as  a  geolo- 
gist, i,  234. 

Smith's  Bible  Dictionary,  its  treatment 
of  the  Deluge,  i,  234,  235.  Its  atti- 
tude toward  the  Dead  Sea  myths,  ii, 
256.     Cited,  91,  note  ;  ii,  173,  note. 

Smith    and    Cheetham's   Dictionary  of 


INDEX. 


463 


Christian  Antiquities,  cited,  ii,  136, 
note  ;  266,  note. 

Snake-bite,  mediaeval  cure  for,  ii,  39. 

Snell,  cited,  ii,  125,  note  ;  166,  note. 

Societies,  scientific,  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, i.  41. 

Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowl- 
edge, its  publications  on  evolution,  i, 

76-  . 

Socrates,   his   condemnation   of  certain 

physical  investigations,  i,  374.  His  be- 
lief in  demoniacal  possession,  ii,  100. 

Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  explanations  of 
their  destruction,  ii,  257.  Allegorical 
significance  of  the  five  cities  of  the 
plain,  294. 

Sofi,  the,  their  mystical  interpretation  of 
the  Koran,  ii,  293. 

Soissons,  Abbey  of,  value  of  the  relics  at, 
ii,  29. 

Soldan,  cited,  i,  352,  note  ;  358,  note  ; 
360,  note  ;  ii,  75,  note  ;  78,  note  ;  157, 
note. 

Solomon's  horses,  Bochart  on,  i,  40. 

Solomon's  Song,  early  attempts  to  criti- 
cise and  interpret  it,  ii,  325,  326. 
Herder's  criticism  of,  326. 

Solomon,  Wisdom  of,  references  to  the 
story  of  Lot's  wife  in,  ii,  226,  234,  261, 
262.     Cited,  226,  note. 

Solovetsk,  Convent  of,  resistance  of  its 
monks  to  the  revision  of  the  Slavonic 
Scriptures,  ii,  309,  310. 

Solutre,  human  bones  found  at,  i,  290. 

Somerset,  High  Sheriff  of, his  death  from 
jail  fever,  ii,  84. 

Somerville,  Mary,  denunciation  of  her 
by  Dean  Cockburn,  i,  65,  224.  On  the 
proofs  of  the  existence  of  the  Deity, 
225,  note.    Cited,  no,  note  ;  225,  note. 

Somme,  prehistoric  remains  on  the  river, 
i,  271-273. 

Soranus,  his  study  of  insanity,  ii,  98. 

Sorbonne,  its  treatment  of  Buffon,  i;  9, 
61,  62,  215.  Its  condemnation  of  in- 
oculation, ii,  55.  Philological  studies 
at,  200.  Its  utterances  on  usury,  278, 
283. 

Sorcerers,  Pope  John's  bulls  against,  i, 
384.  Acquittal  of  fourteen  persons 
condemned  as,  in  France,  ii,  142.  See 
also  Witches. 

Sorrow,  its  entrance  into  the  world,  i,  285. 

de  Sourdis,  Archbishop  of  Bordeaux, 
his  investigation  of  the  case  of  Gran- 
dier,  charged  with  witchcraft,  ii,  144. 

South,  Dr.,  his  denunciation  of  the  Royal 
Society,  i,  41,  148.  On  the  naming 
of  the  animals  by  Adam,  ii,  195. 

South  America,  distribution  of  animals 
in,   i,  45,  48.     Likeness   of  the   lake 


system  of,  to  that  of  the  Dead  Sea,  ii, 
222. 
South  Carolina,  University  of,  reception 
of  Dr.  Woodrow  at,  i,  85.     Professor- 
ship  held   by    Dr.  Woodrow   in    the, 

317- 

South  Carolina,  Presbyterian  Synod  of, 
its  attitude  toward  Dr.  Woodrow,  317. 

Southall,  on  the  recent  origin  of  the 
world,  i,  296-300.     Cited,  301,  note. 

Southey,  cited,  ii,  71,  note. 

Souvenirs  de  Cre'quy,  cited,  ii,  156,  note. 

Spain,  her  claim  in  the  New  World,  i, 
108.  Suppression  of  scientific  research 
in,  391, 408.  Backwardness  of  medical 
science  in,  ii,  52.  Sanitary  conditions 
in,  81.  King  of,  his  fear  of  demoni- 
acal possession,  120.  Last  struggles  of 
the  witch  persecution  in,  123.  Rate 
of  interest  in,  269.  Theories  regard- 
ing the  taking  of  interest  in,  2S0,  281. 
Extirpation  of  fair  biblical   criticism 

in,  333- 

Spaulding,  Archbishop,  cited,  i,  170,  note. 

Species,  theories  as  to  the  distinctions  of, 
i,  30,  44,  47,  66.  Increase  of,  46,  47. 
Appearance  of  new,  55,  58. 

Spectator,  The,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Spectroscope,  results  obtained  by,  i,  17. 

Spectrum  of  gases  and  solids,  evidence 
furnished  by,  i,  17. 

Specula,  burning,  Roger  Bacon's  inven- 
tion of,  i,  387. 

Speculatores  domus  Israel,  bull,  cited,  i, 
159,  note. 

Spee,  Friedrich,  his  struggle  against  the 
witch  persecution,  i,  357,  358. 

Speech.     See  Language. 

Spence,  cited,  i,  404,  note. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  evolution  and  crea- 
tion, i,  66.  Scientific  activity  of,  68. 
His  reply  to  Gladstone,  76.  Light 
thrown  by  him  on  man's  spiritual  evo- 
lution, 312  ;  ii,  394.  On  the  power  of 
mind  over  body,  25.  Cited,  i,  77,  note  ; 
90,  note. 

Spheres,  doctrine  of  the,  i,  118,  202. 

Sphinx,  the,  its  position  in  Eusebius's 
chronological  tables,  i,  250.  The 
Sphinx  of  Gizeh,  260. 

Spiders,  reason  for  the  creation  of,  i,  43. 

Spinoza,  effect  of  theological  atmosphere 
on,  i,  58.  His  views  of  the  inspiration 
and  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  ii, 
317.  Persecution  of,  318.  His  influ- 
ence on  Lessing,  319.    Cited,  321,  note. 

Spleen,  its  function,  ii,  3S. 

Spleiss,  Stephen,  on  the  vision  of  Jere- 
miah, i,  194.     Cited,  i,  194,  note. 

Spornitz,  legend  of  stones  near,  ii,  216. 

Spottiswoode,  Archbishop,  his  views  re- 


464 


INDEX. 


garding   comets,    i,    1S0.     Cited,   180, 

note. 
Sprains,  medieval  cure  for,  ii,  40. 
Sprengel,  cited,  i,  378,  note  ;  391,  note  ; 

ii,  2,  note  ;  3,  note  ;  25,  note  ;  27,  note  ; 

32,  note  ;  34,  note  ;  36,  note  ;  42,  note  ; 

45,  note  ;  53,  note  ;  57,  note  ;  74,  note  ; 

97,  note  ;  99,  note. 
Sprenger,  and  the  witch  persecution,  i, 

3S5- 
Springfield,  cases  of  diabolic  possession 

in,  ii,  146. 

Spy,  human  skulls  discovered  at,  i,  290. 

Squills,  employment  of,  to  drive  out 
Satan,  ii,  107. 

Stade,  perfectly  preserved  body  of  a  sol- 
dier of  the  eighth  century  unearthed 
at,  ii,  10,  note. 

Stanley,  A.  P.,  Dean,  on  the  attempts  to 
reconcile  Scripture  with  science,  i,  247. 
On  the  relations  between  science  and 
religion,  320.  On  the  Dead  Sea  le- 
gends, ii,  259.  His  service  to  science, 
263.  His  defence  of  Colenso,  355,  356. 
Cited,  i,  181,  note  ;  ii,  222,  note  ;  260, 
note.  His  Life  and  Letters,  cited, 
348,  note. 

Stark,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Stars,  representation  of,  in  cathedral 
sculpture,  i,  1.  The  light  of,  13,  14. 
Their  place  in  the  spheres,  118.  An- 
cient views  regarding,  171.  Origen's 
views  regarding,  ii,  297. 

Stars,  falling,  effect  of  terror  caused  by, 
ii,  63. 

Steck,  R.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Steele,  Robert,  cited,  i,  36,  note. 

Steenstrup,  his  investigation  of  the  shell- 
heaps  and  peat-beds  of  Scandinavia,  i, 
292,  293. 

Steigenberger,  his  denunciation  of  hyp- 
notism, ii,  65.     Cited,  66,  note. 

Steinthal,  his  work   in  philology,  ii,  203. 

Stengel,  on  the  judgments  of  God,  i,  334. 
Cited,  334,  note;  ii,  117,  note;  118, 
note. 

Steno,   his   geological    investigations,    i, 

215- 

Stephen,  Sir  James,  cited,  ii,  156,  note. 

Stephen,  J.  F.,  cited,  ii,  271,  note. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  cited,  i,  150,  note. 

Stephens  (Etienne),  Robert,  variations  in 
biblical  manuscripts   found  by,  ii,  319. 

Sterzinger,  on  diabolical  agency  in  storms, 
i»  365. 

Stettin,  imprint  of  St.  Otho's  feet  on  a 
stone  at,  ii,  212. 

Stewart,  Dugald,  on  the  fraudulent  char- 
acter of  Sanskrit,  ii,  194,  379. 

Stilhngfleet,  Bishop,  on  the  Deluge,  i, 
230. 


Stockwell,  G.  A.,  cited,  ii,  219,  note. 
Stoics,    their   mystical  interpretation   of 

Greek  myths,  ii,  293. 
Stoltzlin,  his  handbook  of  prayers  against 
bad    weather,   i,    334.       Cited,     335, 
note. 
Stone  epoch,  evidences  of  evolution  in 
the,  i,  276,  291,  292.     The,  in  Egypt, 
297-300. 
Stone  implements  found  among  the  peas- 
ants of  Europe,  i,  307. 
Stones,  meteoric,  explanation  of,  ii,  211. 
Transformation  of  living  beings   into, 
215-218.    Stone  on  which  the  disciples 
were    sleeping    during   the   prayer   of 
Christ,  238.     Stone  on  which  the  Lord 
sat  when  he  raised  Lazarus,  238.    Stone 
from  which  he    ascended,  the    Lord's 
footprints  on,  238.     Stone  which  the 
builders  rejected,  238. 
Stoppani,  cited,  i,  226,  note. 
Stork,  C.  A.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 
Storms,    ideas  of  classical   antiquity  re- 
garding, i,  323.     Diabolical  agency  in, 
336-350. 
Story,    W.   W.,    cited,   ii,   41,  note  ;  71, 

note ;  102,  note. 
Stoughton,    his    activity   in    the    Salem 

witch  persecution,  ii,  152,  154. 
Strabo,  cited,  ii,  223,  note. 
Strasburg,    execution  of  Jews  in,   ii,  73. 

Dancing  epidemic  at,  137. 
Strasburg  Cathedral,    protection   of,   by 
means  of  a  lightning-rod,  i,  365.     Rep- 
resentation  of  Satan  in    the  windows 
of,  ii,  no. 
Strauchius,  cited,  i,  257,  note. 
Streams,  miraculous  powers  of,  ii,  25,  26. 
Streissguth,  W.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 
Strong,  his  acceptance  of  the  local  char- 
acter of  the  Deluge,  i,  235.   His  accept- 
ance of  the  new  philology,  ii,  206. 
Struggle  for   existence,  Darwin  on,  i,  67. 
Strype,  his  mention  of  comets  as  portents, 

i,  179.     Cited,  180,  note. 
Stuart,   Moses,  his  opposition   to  evolu- 
tion, i,  65.    On  the  six  days  of  creation, 
224.     His  attitude  toward  scientists, 
271. 
Stunica,  his  attack  on  Erasmus,  11,  304. 
Stuttgart,   Protectant    Consistory   of,  its 

warnings  to  Kepler,  i,  154. 
Suarez,  on  secondary  causes,  i,  56. 
Suetonius,  cited,  i,  172,  note  ;  173,  note  ; 

ii,  41,  note. 
Suffocation,  attributed   to  the  action  of 

evil  spirits,  i,  402. 
Sulphur,    employment   of,  to   drive   out 
Satan,  ii,   107.      Concretions  of,   near 
the  Dead  Sea,  221. 
Summis  Desiderantes,   Innocent  VIII's 


INDEX. 


465 


bull  against  witchcraft,  i,  351,  352,  385, 
394  ,   li,  74,  77,  78,  117. 

Sumner,  Archbishop,  his  protest  against 
Essays  and  Reviews ^  ii,  343. 

Sun,  representation,  of  the  creation  of,  i, 
I,  12.  Nature  of  its  light,  13.  t'os- 
mas  on  the  movement  of  the,  94.  Bo- 
chart's  chapter  <>n  the  horses  of  the, 
40.     Its  place  in  the  spheres,  118. 

Sunday  schools,  American,  effect  of 
Lynch's  exploration  of  the  Dead  Sea 
on,  ii,  252. 

Sunderland,  J.  T.,  cited,  ii,  333,  note. 

Supply,  the,  the  ship  in  which  Lieuten- 
ant Lynch  made  his  expedition  to  Pal- 
estine, ii,  250. 

Surgery,  theological  opposition  to,  ii,  31, 
32,  40. 

Survival  of  the  fittest,  Darwin  on,  i,  67. 

Svedberg,  Bishop,  his  attack  on  Linnaeus, 
i,  60. 

Sweden,  witch  persecution  in,  i,  361. 
Last  struggles  of  this  superstition  in, 
ii,  123.  Objection  to  the  taking  of  the 
census  in,  286, 

Swine,  transformation  of  men  into,  i,  55. 

Swine  possessed  of  devils,  influence  of 
the  story  of  the,  on  belief  in  demoniacal 
possession,  ii,  no,  113,  115.  Identi- 
fication of  the  spot  where  they  plunged 
into  the  sea,  i,  38  ;  ii,  240. 

Swiss  Protestants,  their  support  of  the 
theory  of  the  divine  origin  of  Hebrew 
vowel  points,  ii,  178. 

Sybel,  cited,  ii,  231,  note. 

Syllabus  of Errors,  its  influence  on  the 
new  interpretation  of  Scripture,  ii, 
368. 

Sylvester  II  (Gerbert),  Pope,  his  measure- 
ment of  the  earth,  i,  no.  Charge  of 
magic  against,  386.  His  encourage- 
ment of  medicine,  ii,  36.  Charge  of 
sorcery  against,  38. 

Sylvia,  St.,  evidence  of  her  sanctity,  ii, 
69. 

Symonds,  cited,  ii,  II,  note  ;  308,  note; 
309,  note. 

Synagogue  rolls,  absence  of  vowel  points 
in  the,  ii,  177. 

Tabernacle,  Jewish,  allegorical  signifi- 
cance of,  ii,  295. 

Tacitus,  cited,  i,  173,  note  ;  ii,  41,  note  ; 
223,  note. 

Tailor,  representation  of  the  Almighty 
as  a,  i,  27. 

Tait,  Archbishop,  bis  view  of  the  bib- 
lical accounts  of  the  creation,  i,  24. 
On  the  relations  between  science  and 
religion,  320.  His  position  in  the  con- 
troversy over  Essays  and  Reviews,  ii, 

58 


343347-  H's  attitude  toward  Co- 
lenso,  356.  Life  and  Letters  of,  cited, 
368,  note. 

Tait,  James,  cited,  i,  86,  note. 

Talents,  parable  of  the,  ii,  275. 

Talmud,  absence  of  any  mention  of  He- 
brew vowel  points  in  the,  ii,  177. 

Tapestries,  their  preservation  of  theo- 
logical views  of  science,  i,  36. 

Tarantella,  survival  of  a  manifestation 
of  diabolic  possession  in  the  form  of 
the,  ii,  140. 

Tarantism,  a  form  of  possession  long 
known  in  Italy,  ii,  140. 

Tarantula,  supernatural  intervention 
caused  by  the  bite  of  a,  ii,   1411. 

Tardieu,  his  labours  in  hygienic  research, 

ii,  93- 

Targum,  its  testimony  respecting  the 
statue  of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  228. 

Taurin,  St.,  his  relics  potent  against  dry 
weather,  i,  344. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  his  superstition  regard- 
ing comets,  i,  180.     Cited,  180,  note. 

Teaching,  liberty  of,  its  effect  on  biblical 
study,  ii,  333. 

Telegraphs,  heralds  of  Antichrist,  ii,  286. 

Temple,  Bishop,  on  evolution,  i,  82.  On 
the  relations  between  science  and  re- 
ligion, 320.  His  part  in  Essays  and 
Reviews,  ii,  342.  His  refusal  to  act 
against  his  convictions,  344.  Cited,  i, 
87,  note. 

Temples,  Egyptian  and  Grecian,  sur- 
vival of  prehistoric  construction  in,  i, 
310. 

Tennessee  Conference,  on  unsanctified 
science,  i,  315. 

Tenon,  his  advocacy  of  reform  in  the 
treatment  of  the  insane,  ii,  130. 

Tenzel,  Leibnitz's  letter  to,  ii,  190. 

Terreil,  cited,  ii,  222,  note. 

Tertiary  period,  possibility  of  man's  ex- 
istence in  the,  i,  275,  282. 

Tertullian,  on  the  pre-existence  of  mat- 
ter, i,  4.  On  the  second  book  of 
Esdras,  in.  His  belief  regarding 
eclipses,  173.  On  fossils,  210,  225. 
On  lightning,  323.  On  miraculous  in- 
terposition during  the  battle  against 
the  Quadi,  332.  On  malevolent  angels, 
ii,  27.  His  denunciation  of  anato- 
mists, 31,  32,  50.  Poem  on  the  statue 
of  Lot's  wife,  ascribed  to,  227.  His 
resistance  to  allegorical  interpretations, 
29c.  Cited,  i,  5,  note  ;  173,  note  ;  225, 
note;  324,  note;  ii,  28,  note;  101, 
note. 

Testament,  New,  references  to  magic  in, 
'.  373-  Theory  of  disease  in,  ii,  2,  100. 
Condemnation  of  usury  in,  2(15.     Alle- 


466 


INDEX. 


gorical  interpretation  of,  295.  Valla's 
work  upon,  303.  Revised  version, 
changes  in  the  American  edition  of, 
388,  note.  Higher  criticism  of,  385- 
387.  Influence  of  the  revised  version 
of,  386,  387. 

Testament,  Old,  references  to  magic  in, 
i,  373.  To  witchcraft,  ii,  135.  Theory 
of  disease  in,  100.  Condemnation  of 
usury  in,  265.  Allegorical  interpreta- 
tion of,  294,  295. 

Teutobocus,  King,  the  fossil  remains  of, 
i,  226. 

Teutonic  peoples,  mythology  of,  ii,  211, 
216. 

Texier.  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Thames,  excavations  in  the  terraces 
above  the,  i,  278. 

Thames  Tunnel,  the  breaking  in  of  the, 
declared  to  be  a  divine  judgment,  ii, 
286. 

Thebes,  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  i,  98. 

Theologians,  their  efforts  to  fix  the  date 
of  the  creation,  i,  9.  To  reconcile  the 
two  accounts  in  Genesis,  19.  Their 
failure  to  grasp  the  real  truth  of  the 
Bible,  22.  Their  views  on  the  distinc- 
tions of  species,  31.  Their  attempt  to 
suppress  the  study  of  Nature,  41.  Their 
attitude  toward  science  at  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  48.  Their  re- 
cent attitude  toward  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution, 81,  82.  Their  refutations  of 
the  Copernican  system,  144.  Their 
belief  in  magic  and  witchcraft,  385. 
Results  of  their  study  of  comparative 
philology,  ii,  168. 

Theology,  mediaeval,  representation  of, 
in  sacred  art,  i,  1,  11,  12.  Mystic,  its 
development,  395. 

Theophilus,  Bishop  of  Antioch,  on  the 
form  of  the  earth,  i,  92.  On  the  an- 
tiquity of  the  earth,  250. 

Theories,  mistaken,  their  effect,  i,  43. 

Theresa,  St.,  hallucinations  of,  ii,  120. 
Thesaurus  Exorcismorum,  cited,  i,  341, 
note  ;  ii,  106,  note  ;  108,  note. 

Thibet,  mission  of  Fathers  Hue  and 
Gabet  to,  ii,  380. 

Thirlwall,  his  work  in  Greek  history,  ii, 
341.     His  attitude  toward   the  higher 
criticism,  343-346.    His  defence  of  Co- 
lenso,    356.     Cited,    341,    note ;    348, 
note. 
Thirty,  mystic  significance  of  the  num- 
ber, ii,  299. 
Thistles,  reason  for  the  creation  of,  i,  43. 
Tholuck,  his  support  of  Hupfeld,  ii,  328. 
Cited,  182,  note  ;  308,  note  ;  309,  note. 
Thomas,  St.,  legend  of  final  banishment 
of  his  doubts,  ii,  212. 


Thomas  Aquinas,  St.,  his  theory  of  the 
creation,  i,  7,  30,  55.  His  belief  in  the 
sphericity  of  the  earth,  97.  His  posi- 
tion as  a  thinker,  117,  379,  380.  His  Cy- 
clopaedia of  Theology,  117.  His  influ- 
ence on  astronomy,  117.  On  the  work 
of  devils,  119.  On  comets,  175.  His 
treatment  of  geology,  211.  On  the  dia- 
bolical origin  of  storms,  337.  On  con- 
secrated bells,  347,  note.  His  writings 
commended  to  the  monks  of  Lerins, 
371.  Legends  regarding,  380.  His  in- 
fluence on  science,  380,  395.  His  views 
on  the  Redemption,  397.  Mystic  sci- 
ence of,  398.  Loss  resulting  from  the 
theological  bias  of,  ii,  90.  His  theory 
of  insanity,  104.  On  the  study  of  the 
forces  of  the  body,  38.  His  condem- 
nation of  the  taking  of  interest,  267, 
272.  His  belief  in  the  oracular  inter- 
pretation of  Scripture,  302.  His  ex- 
position of  the  writings  of  Dionysius 
the  Areopagite,  315.  Cited,  i,  8,  note  ; 
56,  note;  117,  note;  122,  note;  338, 
note  ;  380,  note  ;  ii,  269,  note. 

Thomas  of  Cantimpre,  his  book  on  bees, 

i.  35- 

Thomas,  Cyrus,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Thomasius,  Christian,  his  efforts  against 
the  witchcraft  superstition,  i,  360,  362, 
394;  ii,  119.    His  place  in  history,  134. 

Thomassin,  Father  Louis,  his  treatise  on 
the  Hebrew  tongue,  ii,  186.  Cited, 
188,  note. 

Thompson,  J.  P.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Thomsen,  his  classification  of  prehistoric 
man,  i,  288. 

Thomson,  Sir  W.     See  Kelvin. 

Thonon,  its  resolution  regarding  the  ex- 
communication of  insects,  ii,  113. 

Thor,  the  god  of  thunder,  i,  336. 

Thoresby,  Ralph,  his  superstition  re- 
garding comets,  i,  181.  Cited,  182, 
note. 

Thorns,  reason  for  the  creation  of,  i,  28. 

Thornton,  cited,  i,  172,  note. 

Thorpe,  cited,  ii,  211,  note;  213,  note  ; 
218,  note. 

Thoth,  the  giver  of  language  to  the 
Egyptians,  ii,  169. 

Thought,  revival  of,  in  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries,  its  influence  on 
science,  i,  377. 

Thouret,  his  defence  of  vaccination,  ii, 

58- 

Three,  mystical  significance  of  the  num- 
ber, i,  119,  395.  Origin  of  the  Eastern 
reverence  for,  120,  note. 

Thrones,  an  order  of  the  first  hierarchy 
of  angels,  i,  119. 

Thucydides,  his  account  of  the  plague 


INDEX. 


467 


of  Athens,  ii,  67.  Cited,  68,  note  ;  74, 
note. 

Thunderbolts,  believed  to  be  imbedded 
in  the  earth,  i,  266.  Ideas  of  classical 
antiquity  regarding,  323.  Diabolical 
origin  of  thunderbolts,  338. 

Thunder-stones,  i,  266-271. 

Tiberias,  rabbinical  schools  at,  ii,  292. 

Ticknor,  cited,  i,  132,  note  ;  ii,  332,  note. 

Tides,  theory  as  to  their  cause,  i,  327. 
Their  influence  on  the  vitality  of  the 
body,  ii,  38. 

Tigers,  reason  for  their  creation,  i,  28. 
Distribution  of,  46,  47.  Remains  of, 
found  in  England,  277. 

Tigretier  of  Abyssinia,  epidemics  of 
dancing  in  the,  ii,  163. 

Tigris,  early  civilization  on  the  banks  of 
the,  i,  51. 

Tikkanen,  cited,  i,  13,  note. 

Tiraboschi,  cited,  i,  107,  note  ;  130,  note. 

Tirinus,  on  the  Dead  Sea  legends,  ii, 
245.     Cited,  246,  note. 

Tirus,  the  serpent,  legend  of,  ii,  231, 
236. 

Tissot,  Prof,  his  investigations  of  the 
epidemic  of  alleged  diabolic  posses- 
sion in  Morzine,  ii,  160,  161.  Cited, 
163,  note. 

Titans,  the  story  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Titicaca,  lake,  likeness  of,  to  the  Dead 
Sea,  ii,  222. 

Titus,  alleged  epistles  of  Dionysius  ad- 
dressed to,  ii,  315. 

Toads,  livers  of,  their  use  as  medicine, 

ii.  39- 

Tobit,  cited,  ii,  41,  note. 

Tobler,  cited,  i,  100,  note  ;  ii,  229,  note  ; 
231,  note  ;  233,  note  ;  241,  note ;  243, 
note  ;  248,  note. 

Toil,  its  entrance  into  the  world,  i,  285. 

Tollemer,  cited,  ii,  106,  note. 

Tollius,  his  theory  regarding  thunder- 
stones,  i,  267. 

Tombs,  representations  of  daily  life  on 
Egyptian,  i,  259.  Artistic  perfection 
of,  260. 

Tongues,  alleged  possession  of  the  gift  of, 
by  Xavier,  ii,  19,  20.  By  possessed 
persons  in  Morzine,  159,  161.  Early 
theory  of  the  diversity  of,  170.  He- 
brew legends  of  the  confusion  of,  170, 
171,  174.  Hindu  legend,  172.  Mexi- 
can, 173.     Greek,  173. 

Tooker,  Dr.,  on  the  cures  wrought  by 
Elizabeth,  ii,  46. 

Tooth,  medicinal  properties  of  a  dead 
man's,  ii,  40. 

Toothache,  mediaeval  cure  for,  ii,  40. 

Topinard,  cited,  i,  283,  note  ;  288,  note. 
Torlonia   family,    their   wealth,    an    in- 


stance of  money  gained  by  usury,  ii, 

285. 
Torquay,  remains  of  man  in  the  caverns 

of,  i,  276. 
Torreblanca,  his  views  on  comets,  i,  186. 

Cited,  186,  note. 
Torricelli,  his  experiments  in  physics,  i, 

39A  407- 

Torrubia,  his  exhibition  of  fossil  remains, 
i,  227. 

Torture,  threatened  against  Galileo,  i, 
142,  note.  Proofs  of  the  sacred  theory 
of  meteorology  extracted  by,  352,  353, 
354,  356.  357.  359-  Klade  subjected  to, 
357.  Binsfeld  on,  358.  Dr.  Fian  sub- 
jected to,  360.  Its  use  in  Scotland, 
361.  Effect  of  its  discontinuance,  362. 
Torture  of  witches,  ii,  75-77.  Limit 
of,  under  paganism,  76.  Absence  of 
limit  in  cases  of  witchcraft,  77,  118. 
Torture  of  the  insane,  no.  Of  peo- 
ple suspected  of  transforming  them- 
selves into  wolves,  114.  The  tortura 
insomnia,  1 19.  Grandier  subjected  to, 
144.  Possessed  Huguenots  subjected 
to,  145.  Indian  woman  in  Salem  sub- 
jected to,  148.  Torture  of  victims  of 
the  Salem  witch  persecution,  151.  Of 
Maria  Renata  Sanger,  157. 

Tostatus,  his  protest  against  the  doctrine 
of  the  antipodes,  i,  108.  On  the  dale 
of  creation,  253. 

Touch,  the  royal,  ii,  45-49. 

Toulouse,  torture  of  witches  for  causing 
plague  at,  ii,  76.* 

Tournal,  his  discoveries  in  the  cavern  of 
Bize,  i,  270. 

Tours,  Council  of,  its  prohibition  of  the 
study  of  physics  to  ecclesiastics,  i,  3S6. 

Towers  in  Chaldean  architecture,  reason 
for  building  them,  ii,  172.  Cause  of 
their  ruin,  172. 

Townsend,  cited,  ii,  53,  note. 

Toy,  Prof.,  his  expulsion  from  his  position 
in  Kentucky,  i,  129,  168,  318.  His 
work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii,  370. 
Cited,  i,  102,  note;  ii,  3,  note;  391, 
note. 

Tractors,  metallic,  cures  wrought  by,  ii, 
65. 

Trade,  hampering  of,  bylaws  against  the 
taking  of  interest,  ii,  269-271. 

Traill,  H.  D.,  cited,  ii,  348,  note. 

Transformation  of  living  beings,  origin 
of  stories  of,  ii,  215. 

Transmutation  of  metals,  theological  ar- 
gument in  favour  of,  i,  396. 

Tree  of  knowledge,  Hindu  legend  of  the, 
ii,  172. 

Trees,  transformation  of  human  beings 
into,  ii,  219. 


468 


INDEX. 


Trelat,  cited,  ii,  99,  note  ;  103,  note  ;  132, 
note. 

Trent,  Council  of,  absence  of  knowledge 
of  Xavier's  miracles  in,  ii,  13. 

Trenton,  explorations  in  the  drift  at,  i, 
279. 

Treves,  priest  of,  struck  by  lightning  for 
his  sins,  i,  332.  Value  of  the  relics  at, 
ii,  29. 

Treviranus,  on  thenlevelopment  of  spe- 
cies, i,  62,  63. 

Triangle,  mystic  significance  of  the,  i,  7- 

Trinidad,  pitch  lakes  of,  resemblance  of 
the  Dead  Sea  to,  ii,  222. 

Tristram,  Canon  on  the  Dead  Sea  le- 
gends, ii,  258.  His  services  to  science, 
263.  Cited,  222,  note  ;  225,  note  ;  255, 
note. 

Troliope,  T.  A.,  cited,  i,  332,  note  ;  ii, 
145,  note  ;  388,  note. 

Trondhjem,  Cathedral  of,  fraudulent 
miracles  at,  ii,  43. 

Troyon,  on  the  lake-dwellers,  i,  294. 
Cited,  309,  note. 

Trullanean  Council,  its  decree  against 
Jewish  physicians,  ii,  44. 

Tuckey,  L.,  cited,  ii,  166,  note. 

Tuke,  D.  H.,  cited,  ii,  66,  note  ;  no, 
note;  119,  note  ;  121,  note  ;  129,  note; 
132,  note  ;  133,  note  ;  158,  note  ;  166, 
note. 

Tuke,  William,  his  reforms  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  insane,  ii,  132-134.  His 
place  in  history,  134,  166. 

Tulloch,  John,  cited,  i,  24,  note. 

Turgot,  his  philosophy  of  history,  i,  288. 
His  work  in  political  economy,  ii,  283. 
Cited,  283,  note. 

Turks,  their  conquests  in  Europe  accom- 
panied by  the  appearance  of  a  comet, 
i,  177.  Their  care  for  the  insane,  ii, 
105. 

Turner,  Dr.  Daniel,  on  the  cure  of  king's 
evil  by  Queen  Anne,  ii,  48 

Turner,  Dr.  Samuel,  his  acceptance  of 
modern  geology,  i,  235.  Cited,  235, 
note. 

Turretin,  his  scriptural  proof  of  the  geo- 
centric theory,  i,  127. 

Tursellinus,  his  life  of  Xavier,  ii,  14-18, 
20.     Cited,  21,  note. 

Twelve,  mystical  theories  regarding  the 
number,  i,  396  ;  ii,  300. 

Twenty-five,  mystic  significance  of  the 
number,  ii,  299. 

Twenty-four,  mystic  significance  of  the 
number,  ii,  296. 

Twenty-two,  mystic  significance  of  the 
number,  ii,  296. 

Two,  mystic  significance  of  the  number, 
i,  7- 


Tyana,  origin  of  lake  and  morass  near, 

ii,  213. 
Tyerman,  cited,  ii,  126,  note. 
Tyler,  M.  C,  cited,  ii,  146,  note. 
Tylor,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  68.     His 

works  on  comparative  ethnology,  305. 

On    man's    spiritual    evolution,    312 

Cited,  90,  note  ;  136,  note  ;  235,  note  ; 

265,  note  ;  269,  note  ;  281,  note  ;  291, 

note  ;  309,  note  ;  310,  note  ;  373,  note  ; 

ii,  98,  note  ;  213,  note. 
Tyndale,  on  meteorological  phenomena 

as  Divine  agents,  i,  333.     His  hostility 

to    the    baptism    of  bells,    348,    note. 

Cited,  333,  note. 
Tyndall,  scientific  activity  of,  i,  68. 
Tyrus.     See  Tirus. 

Ueberweg,  cited,  ii,  303,  note. 

Ulm,  representation  of  the  Almighty  in 
the  Cathedral  of,  i,  24. 

Ulrich  of  Augsburg,  Bishop,  on  forced 
interpretations  of  the  Scripture,  ii,  368. 

Ultramontanes,  cures  wrought  by,  ii,  24. 

Una,  Prince,  information  derived  from 
his  celebrated  inscription,  i,  260. 

Unicorn,  St.  Isidore  on  the,  i,  33.  Kirch- 
maier  on  the,  39. 

United  States,  recent  history  of  hygiene 
in,  ii,  90,  94.  Objection  to  the  taking 
of  the  census  in,  2S6. 

Unity  of  a  body  of  sacred  literature,  be- 
lief in,  ii,  292. 

Universe,  the  visible,  i,  1-24.  Theories 
of  its  creation,  1,  3,  4,  6,  7,  14,  22. 
Matter  of  which  it  was  made,  4.  Cul- 
mination of  the  older  thought  regard- 
ing, 11,  12.  Attempts  to  reconcile  the 
Mosaic  accounts  of  its  creation  with 
the  conclusions  of  science,  19.  Tri- 
umph of  the  scientific  view  of,  22,  23. 
Old  sacred  theory  of,  1 14-120. 

Universities,  English,  the  stronghold  of 
theology,  i,  49. 

Universities,  State,  establishment  of,  in 
America,  i,  413-415. 

Upham,  value  of  his  history  of  the  Salem 
witchcraft,  ii,  150,  note.  Cited,  147, 
note  ;   152,  note. 

Upsala,  representations  of  the  creation 
in  the  cathedral  of,  i,  3,  note  ;  59  ;  62, 
note. 

Urban  II,  Pope,  his  views  as  to  the 
centre  of  the  earth,  i,  99. 

Urban  III,  Pope,  on  the  taking  of  inter- 
est, ii,  267. 

Urban  V,  Pope,  his  gift  to  the  Greek 
Emperor,  i,  342. 

Urban  VIII,  Pope,  his  opposition  to  sci- 
ence, i,  41.  His  attitude  toward  Gali- 
leo, 136,  138,  158.     His  great  error  in 


INDEX. 


469 


condemning  Galileo,  141.  Bull  against 
Galileo's  teachings,  144,  165.  On  pro- 
posed honours  to  Galileo's  memory,  146. 
I  lis  personal  resentment  toward  Gali- 
leo, 160.  On  the  authoritative  nature 
of  Galileo's  condemnation,  163.  His 
sanction  of  a  sacred  chronology,  253. 
His  hostility  to  the  Academy  of  the 
Lincei,  393.  His  canonization  of 
Xavier,  ii,  20. 

Ure,  Dr.,  on  the  antiquity  of  the  earth,  i, 
241. 

Urquinaona  y  Bidot,  Bishop,  his  excom- 
munication of  Dr.  Chil,  i,  85. 

Ursula,  St.,  and  her  eleven  thousand  vir- 
gins, their  relics,  ii,  2q. 

Urumiah,  Median  lake  of,  its  resem- 
blance to  the  Dead  Sea,  ii,  222. 

Usdum,  myth  of  the  salt  pillars  of,  ii, 
224-263.  Universal  acceptance  of, 
226,  241. 

Usher,  Archbishop,  his  efforts  to  fix  the 
date  of  creation,  i,  g,  222.  His  sacred 
chronology,  240,  253,  256.  Cited,  252, 
note ;  257,  note. 

Usury,  theory  as  to  the  meaning  of,  ii, 
273,  275,  278.     See  also  Interest. 

Uzziah,  cause  of  his  leprosy,  ii,  2. 

Vaccination,  theological  opposition  to,  ii, 
55-63.  Results  of  the  use  of,  58,  59. 
Record  of  the  Church  in  the  struggle 
in  behalf  of,  59. 

Vacuum,  mystical  theory  regarding,  i,  396. 

Valentine,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40. 

Valentine,  Basil,  effect  of  mystic  theology 
on,  i,  397,  398.  Importance  of  his  in- 
vestigations, 403.  His  devotion  to  sci- 
ence, ii,  35. 

Valerius,  Polidorus,  cited,  i,  341,  note. 

Valla,  Lorenzo,  beginnings  of  biblical 
criticism  made  by,  ii,  303,  316.  His 
relation  to  the  Church,  314. 

Vanderbilt  University,  treatment  of  Dr. 
Winchell  at,  i,  84,  313-315. 

Van  de  Velde,  his  investigation  of  the 
pillars  of  salt  near  the  Dead  Sea,  ii, 
254,  257,  263.  Cited,  255,  note  ;  26  >, 
note. 

Van  Helmont,  effect  of  mystic  theology 
on,  i,  397.     His  theory  of  gases,  403. 

Vanini,  his  condemnation  for  heresy  at 
Toulouse,  i,  288. 

Van  Swieten,  his  efforts  against  the  the- 
ory of  diabolic  possession,  ii,  127. 

Vatican  Library,  permission  to  use  it 
granted  to  scholars,  i,  170,  note. 

Vatke,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism,  ii, 
328,  329. 

Vaughan,  Archbishop,  cited,  i,  122,  note  ; 
309,  note  ;  380,  note. 


Vedas,  mystical  interpretation  of  the,  ii, 

2q3- 

Vcllio,  Xavier's  miracle  in  behalf  of,  ii, 
15,  16. 

Venetians,  civilization  developed  by  the, 
i,  311.  Their  disregard  of  the  restric- 
tions on  commerce,  ii,  280,  285. 

Venice,  mosaics  in  San  Marco  at,  i,  13. 
Belief  in  the  diabolical  origin  of 
storms  represented  at,  337.  Decree 
of,  against  chemical  experiments,  391. 
Purchase  of  relics  by,  ii,  29.     Sanitary 

1  condition  of,  81.  Establishment  of 
the  bank  of,  280. 

Venus,  its  place  in  the  spheres,  i,  118. 

Vercelli,  Levi  de,  cited,  ii,  45,  note. 

Verdun,  Bishop  of,  a  stone  hatchet  of 
miraculous  properties  given  to,  i,  267. 
On  the  cause  of  a  drought,  335. 

Verrill,  influence  of  Agassiz  on,  i,  69. 

Versailles,  consecration  of  bells  in  the 
Cathedral  of,  i,  346. 

Version  of  the  Bible,  King  James's, 
softening  of  geographical  errors  in,  i, 
100,  note. 

Vesalius,  Andreas,  his  great  work  in 
anatomy,  his  persecution,  and  death, 
ii,  50-54.      Result  of  his  work,  54,  55. 

Vespasian,  Emperor,  his  ridicule  of  super- 
stition regarding  comets,  i,  174.  Cure 
of  a  blind  man  by,  ii,  41. 

Vespucci,  Amerigo,  effect  of  his  voyage, 

i.  45- 

Veuillot,  Louis,  his  idealization  of  the 
parfum  de  Rome,  ii,  n,  note. 

Vezian,  cited,  i,  228,  note  ;  230,  note. 

Vico,  his  philosophy  of  history,  i,  288. 

Victoria  Institute,  foundation  of,  i,  73. 

Vienna,  Leibnitz's  attempt  to  found  an 
Academy  of  Science  at,  i,  58.  Jesuit 
fathers  at,  their  exorcism  of  devils,  ii, 
109. 

Vienne,  Council  of,  its  condemnation  of 
the  taking  of  interest,  ii,  267,  284. 

Vigenere,  Blaise  de,  his  treatise  on 
comets,  i,  197,  198.     Cited,  199,  note. 

Vignes,  cited,  ii,  222,  note. 

de  Vignolles,  his  chronological  computa- 
tions, i,  253. 

Vilagut,  his  great  work  on  usury,  ii,  279. 
Cited,  282,  note. 

de  Villon,  treatment  of  his  scientific 
treatises,  i,  214. 

Villani,  on  God's  punishment  of  Flor- 
ence, i,  332. 

Villari,  cited,  ii,  303,  note. 

Villiers,  Marshal  de,  on  diabolic  posses- 
sion in  a  Huguenot  village,  ii,  145. 

Vincent  de  Paul,  St.     See  PAUL. 

Vincent  of  Beauvais,  his  views  on  the 
creation,  i,  9,  26.     On  the  mystic  sig- 


47o 


INDEX. 


nificance  of  the  number  six,  26.  His 
influence  on  sacred  science,  33.  His 
belief  in  the  sphericity  of  the  earth, 
97.  His  rejection  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  antipodes,  106.  On  the  relation 
between  Sciipture  and  the  geocentric 
theory,  120.  His  sacred  chronology, 
252.  His  deference  to  Aristotle's 
teachings,  330.  His  place  in  the  de- 
velopment of  science,  378,  379.  On 
Noah's  skill  in  alchemy,  398.  Loss 
resulting  from  his  theological  bias, 
ii,  90.  His  theory  of  insanity,  104. 
Cited,  i,  28,  note  ;  107,  note ;  122, 
note;  178,  note  ;  338,  note  ;  352,  note. 

Vincent  of  Berg,  on  witchcraft,  i,  363. 
Cited,  343,  note  ;  363,  note. 

Vincent  of  Lerins,  St.,  his  residence  on 
the  island  of  St.  Honorat,  i,  369.  His 
test  of  truth,  ii,  226,  264. 

Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  his  theory  of  fossils, 
i,  214. 

Vine,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Violet,  origin  of  the,  ii,  219. 

Viollet  le  Due,  cited,  ii,  11,  note. 

Virchow,  his  work  on  brain  diseases,  ii, 
127. 

Virgil,  cited,  i,  172,  note. 

Virgil,  Bishop  of  Salzburg,  his  assertion 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  antipodes,  i,  105. 

Virgil,  Polydore,  his  allusions  to  comets 
in  his  English  Histoiy,  i,  179.  Cited, 
179,  note. 

Virgin,  the  Blessed,  relics  of,  at  the  mon- 
astery of  Lerins,  i,  370.  Votive  offer- 
ings before  the  shrine  of,  at  Einsiedeln, 
ii,  42.  Intercession  of,  in  behalf  of 
Naples,  78.  Of  Morzine,  161.  Im- 
print of  her  tears  on  stones,  212.  Of 
her  girdle,  212. 

Virginia,  asylum  for  the  insane  in,  ii, 
130. 

Vishnu,  representation  of,  i,  11.  Trans- 
formation of  the  wife  of,  ii,  215. 

Vishnu  Purana,  cited,  i,  171,  note. 

Visigoths,  their  treatment  of  the  insane, 
ii,  109. 

Vita  et  Gesta  S.  Sebastiani,  cited,  ii,  88, 
note. 

Vitality  of  the  body,  influence  of  the 
tides  on,  ii,  38. 

Vitelleschi,  his  life  of  Xavier,  ii,  15. 
Cited,  16,  note  ;  21,  note. 

Vitry,  Jacques  de,  on  the  efficacy  of  St. 
Martin's  relics,  ii,  41.  His  story  of 
the  fate  of  a  money-lender,  268.  Cited, 
41,  note  ;   101,  note  ;  269,  note. 

Vitus,  St.,  curative  powers  of,  ii,  40.  Pil- 
grimages to  the  shrine  of,  to  cure  the 
dancing  epidemic,  138. 

Viva,  cited,  ii,  279,  note. 


Vivian,  his  publication  of  McEnery's  dis- 
coveries in  Kent's  Cavern,  i,  269. 

Viviani,  his  views  regarding  the  nature 
of  Galileo's  condemnation,  i,  164. 

Voetius,  on  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the 
Bible,  ii,  308. 

Vogt,  cited,  i,  283,  note. 

Voigt,  his  belief  regarding  comets,  i,  183. 
Cited,  183,  note. 

Volcanoes,  a  source  of  explanatory  myths, 
ii,  213. 

Volney,  account  of  his  travels  in  the  Holy 
Land,  ii,  246,  247.     Cited,  248,  note. 

Voltaire,  his  ridicule  of  De  Maillet,  i,  59. 
On  fossil  remains,  229.  His  influence 
against  superstition,  362,  394  ;  ii,  125. 
Cited,  i,  229,  note. 

Voss,  his  position  in  the  controversy  over 
the  vowel  points,  ii,  178. 

Vossius,  Gerard,  on  comets,  i,  185.  Cited, 
186,  note. 

Vossius,  Isaac,  his  attempt  at  scientific 
study  of  chronology,  i,  254. 

Vowel  points  in  Hebrew,  mediaeval  be- 
lief as  to  their  origin,  ii,  176.  Con- 
troversy over,  176-179. 

Voyages  of  discovery,  effect  of  the,  i,  45. 

Vulcan,  his  relation  to  storms,  i,  323. 

Vulgate,  "  pillar  "  translated  "  statue  "  in 
the  story  of  Lot's  wife  in  the,  ii,  228. 
Belief  in  the  divine  inspiration  of  the, 
308. 

Vulpian,  Prof.,  attack  of  theologians  on, 
i,  409,  410. 

Wachter,  cited,  ii,  78,  note. 

Waddington,  cited,  i,  392,  note. 

Wagner,  his  theory  of  fossils,  i,  240. 

Wagstaffe,  his  opposition  to  witch  per- 
secution, i,  362. 

Waitz,  cited,  i,  310,  note. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  on  evolution  by  natural 
selection,  i,  66.  His  relations  with 
Darwin,  67.  Scientific  activity  of,  68, 
70.  On  the  prehistoric  remains  of 
California,  280.  On  man's  existence 
in  the  Tertiary  period,  282.  Cited, 
2S0,  note. 

Wallace,  D.  M.,  cited,  ii,  310,  note. 

Wallace,  R.,  cited,  i,  252,  note  ;  257,  note. 

Walton,  Brian,  his  position  in  the  con- 
troversy over  the  vowel  points,  ii,  178. 
His  championship  of  Hebrew  as  the 
primitive  speech,  184.  Cited,  ii,  188, 
note. 

Wandelburg,  Haussmann  de,  on  the 
story  of  Lot's  wife  and  her  statue,  ii, 
262,  263. 

Ward,  L.  F.,  cited,  i,  88,  note  ;  209,  note  ; 
212,  note  ;  222,  note  ;  231,  note. 

Ward,  W.  G  ,  his  defence  of  the  Church's 


INDEX. 


471 


persecution  of  Galileo,  i,  162,  163,  165. 
Cited,  ii,  341,  note- 

Waring,  his  sanitary  improvements  in 
Memphis,  ii,  94. 

Warlomont,  cited,  ii,  120,  note. 

Washington,  his  collection  of  philological 
material  for  Catharine  the  Great,  ii, 
190. 

Wasmuth,  his  position  in  the  controversy 
over  the  vowel  points,  ii,  178.  Cited, 
ii,  182,  note. 

Wasps  as  a  type  of  demons,  i,  36. 

Water,  production  of  birds  from,  i,  51. 

Water,  holy,  its  efficacy  against  demo- 
niacal possession,  ii,  102,  160.  Its  in- 
fluence on  a  possessed  person,  142. 

Waterhouse,  his  defence  of  vaccination, 
ii,  58. 

Waterpots  at  the  marriage  of  Cana,  their 
signification,  ii,  297. 

Watson,  J.,  cited,  174,  note  ;  204,  note  ; 
207,  note. 

Watson,  R.,  on  the  effect  of  Adam's  fall 
on  the  animals,  i,  29  ;  on  the  original 
form  of  the  serpent,  221.  Cited,  i, 
31,  note  ;  222,  note. 

Weasel,  Bartholomew's  description  of  the, 
ii,  34.  Asa  type  of  the  sinner,  35.  Rea- 
son for  its  creation,  42. 

Weber,   his   work   in   philology,  ii,  203, 

379- 

Webster,  his  opposition  to  witch  perse- 
cution, i,  362. 

Wedelius,  Prof.,  on  the  statue  of  Lot's 
wife,  ii,  240.     Cited,  ii,  241,  note. 

Wegg-Prosser,  cited,  i,  167,  note. 

Weil,  cited,  ii,  213,  note  ;  218,  note. 

Weimar,  legend  regarding  an  altar  erect- 
ed at,  ii,  217.     Herder  at,  326. 

Weiss,  on  the  Fourth  Gospel,  ii,  386. 

Welcker,  cited,  ii,  218,  note. 

Weld,  cited,  i,  150,  note;  228,  note  ;  ii, 
58,  note. 

Wellhausen,  his  work  in  biblical  criti- 
cism, ii,  331,  332,  360.  Cited,  ii,  138, 
note  ;  270,  note  ;  332,  note  ;  333,  note. 

Wells,   Dr.,  his    theory  of   evolution,   i, 

65- 
Wells,  Sir  Spencer,  cited,  ii,  61,  note. 

Welsh  as  the  primitive  speech,  ii,  184. 

Wemding,  trial  of  a  priest  at,  for  accus- 
ing a  woman  of  witchcraft,  ii,  128. 

Wendell,  Barrett,  cited,  i.  363,  note. 

Wenzel,  Emperor,  his  decree  regarding 
surgery,  ii,  32. 

Were-wolves,  belief  in,  ii,  114. 

Werli,  Hans,  his  failure  to  see  the  statue 
of  Lot's  wife,  ii,  232.  Cited,  ii,  233, 
note. 

Werner,  Prof.,  cited,  i,  391,  note  ;  ii,  104, 
note. 


Wesley,  John,  on  the  effect  of  Adam's 
sin  on  the  animals,  i,  29,  43.  On  the 
difference  between  the  creation  of  man 
and  of  animals,  30.  On  the  Coper- 
nican  system,  128.  His  attitude  to- 
ward the  Newtonian  theory,  148.  His 
views  regarding  comets,  207.  On  the 
geological  and  biological  results  of 
Adam's  fall,  220,  221.  His  views  re- 
garding "the  Fall,"  289.  His  control 
of  the  elements  through  prayer,  340. 
His  belief  in  witchcraft,  361,  363  ;  ii, 
125,  126,  132,  167.  On  cleanliness,  69, 
89.  His  views  on  insanity,  125,  126. 
His  influence  on  English  thought,  334. 
Cited,  i,  31,  note;  150,  note;  155, 
note  ;  207.  note  ;  220,  note  ;  221,  note  ; 
291,  note  ;  ii,  126,  note. 

West  Africa,  the  lake-dwellers  of,  i,  295. 

Westbury,  Lord  Chancellor,  trial  of 
Williams  and  Wilson  before,  ii,  345, 
346.     Epitaph  of,  348,  note. 

Westcott,  Canon,  cited,  ii,  316,  note. 

Westermeyer,    on    the   creation,    i,  242, 

243- 

Westminster  Abbey,  burial  of  Darwin 
in,  i,  83.  Communion  taken  by  the 
revisers  of  the  Bible  in,  ii,  291. 

Westminster  Catechism,  its  teaching  re- 
garding the  creation,  i,  5,  408.  Re- 
tention of  the  passage  from  St.  John 
regarding  the  "  three  witnesses  "  in,  ii, 
305.     Cited,  i,  408,  note. 

Westminster    Confession    of    Faith,    its 
teaching  in  regard  to  the  creation,  i,  8. 
Cited,  10,  note. 
Westminster  Reviezv,  cited,  i,  222,  note  ; 
ii,  348,  note. 

de  Wette,  his  work  in  biblical  criticism, 

ii,  327- 

Whale,  identity  of  the,  with  the  leviathan, 
i,  40. 

Whately,  on  the  impossibility  of  a  peo- 
ple's unassisted  development  from 
barbarism  to  civilization,  i,  304,  305. 

Whewell,  his  essay  in  the  Bridgewater 
series,  i,  43.  His  attitude  toward  Dar- 
winism, 82,  84.  Deception  of,  in  the 
matter  of  Galileo's  trial,  161,  note. 
Cited,  i,  91,  note ;  93,  note ;  106, 
note;  122,  note;  130,  note;  155, 
note  ;  164,  note  ;  375,  note  ;  391,  note  ; 
ii,  53,  note. 

Whitgift,  Archbishop,  on  the  divine  use 
of  meteorological  phenomena,  i,  333. 
Cited,  333,  note. 

Whiston,  his  belief  regarding  comets,  i, 
206.  His  theory  of  the  flood,  219, 
227.  On  the  cure  of  king's  evil  by 
William  III,  ii,  48. 

Whitaker,  Dr.  William,  on  the  antiquity 


472 


INDEX. 


of  Hebrew,  and  the  invention  of  writ- 
ing, ii,  181.     Cited,  1S2,  note. 

White,  William,  cited,  ii,  61,  note. 

Whiteside,  cited,  i,  236,  note. 

Whitney,  J.  D.,  his  discovery  of  prehis- 
toric remains  in  California,  i,  279. 

Whitney,  W.  D.,  his  'article  on  philology 
in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  ii,  193. 
His  work  in  philology,  203,  379.  Cited, 
i,  122,  note  ;  ii,  207,  note. 

Whittier,  cited,  i,  174,  note. 

Widmanstadt,  his  explanation  of  the  heli- 
ocentric doctrine  to  the  Pope,  i,  121. 

Wier  (Weyer),  John,  his  theory  of  wi:ch- 
craft,  i,  359  Persecution  of,  i,  391  ; 
ii,  119.  His  efforts  against  witchcraft, 
122,  127.  His  opposition  to  the  theo- 
logical theory  of  diabolic  possession, 
139.     Cited,  i,  359,  note. 

Wigand,  his  conditional  acceptance  of 
the  theory  of  evolution,  i,  82. 

Wigglesworth,  cited,  ii,  146,  note. 

Wilberforce,  R.  G.,  cited,  ii,  348,  note  ; 
353,  note. 

Wilberforce,  Samuel,  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
on  Darwin's  theory  of  evolution,  i,  70. 
His  attack  on  Essays  and  Reviews,  ii, 
342,  345,  347.  On  the  devotion  of 
English  people  to  the  law,  352.  His 
attack  on  Colenso,  354,  355.  Cited,  i, 
73,  note  ;  ii,  348,  note  ;  355,  note. 

Wilder,  influence  of  Agassiz  on,  i,  69. 

Wilken,  cited,  ii,  231,  note. 

Wilkins,  his  studies  in  Sanskrit,  ii,  194, 

379- 

Wilkinson,  Sir  J.  G.,  modification  of  the 
results  of  his  study  to  bring  them  into 
harmony  with  biblical  chronology,  i, 
256.     Cited,  257,  note. 

Willett,  Andrew,  on  the  original  lan- 
guage of  the  race,  ii,  183.  Cited,  187, 
note. 

William  III,  of  England,  his  cure  of 
king's  evil,  ii,  48. 

William  I,  of  Germany,  his  attendance 
at  the  obsequies  of  Humboldt,  i,  152. 

William  II,  of  Germany,  his  attitude  to- 
ward the  theological  view  of  sanita- 
tion, ii,  95. 

William  of  Conches,  his  deference  to 
Aristotle's  views  regarding  natural 
phenomena,  i,  330.     Cited,  328,  note. 

William  of  Malmesbury,  cited,  i,  177, 
note. 

William  of  Normandy,  his  Bestiary,  i, 
35.     Cited,  36,  note. 

Williams,  on  the  dangers  of  geological 
research,  i,  222. 

Williams,  John,  cited,  ii,  53,  note. 

Williams,  Rowland,  his  part  in  Essays 
and  Reviews,  ii,  342,     Prosecution  of, 


for  ideas  expressed  in  this  essay,  345, 
34°- 

Willis,  cited,  i,  113,  note  ;  ii,  237,  note. 

Wills  and  causes,  Comte's  law  of,  ii,  169, 
170.  Its  application  to  the  develop- 
ment of  sacred  literature,  290. 

Wilson,  Archdeacon,  his  application  of 
the  theory  of  evolution  to  Christianity, 
i,  85.     Cited,  88,  note  ;  115,  note. 

Wilson,  General,  specimens  of  paleolithic 
implements  obtained  by,  i,  302,  note. 

Wilson,  H.  B.,  his  part  in  Essays  and 
Reviews,  ii.  342.  ProsecutiDn  of,  for 
ideas  expressed  in  this  essay,  345,  346. 

Wilson,  J.  L.,  cited,  ii,  163,  note. 

Wilson,  Dr.  Thomas,  on  the  taking  of 
interest,  ii,  274. 

Winchell,  A.,  persecution  of,  i,  84,  129, 
168,  313-315.     Cited,  316,  note. 

Windows,  storied,  their  preservation  of 
popular  ideas  of  Satan,  ii,  135. 

Winds,  representation  of  the  four,  on 
mediaeval  maps,  i,  101.  Idea  of  classic- 
al antiquity  regarding,  323. 

Winsor,  cited,  i,  no,  note  ;  113,  note. 

Winthrop,  Prof.  John,  his  lectures  on 
comets,  i,  207.  On  the  use  of  light- 
ning-rods, 366.     Cited,  207,  note. 

Wiseman,  Cardinal,  his  attempt  to  pre- 
serve the  theological  theory  of  the  cre- 
ation, i,  49.  Foundation  of  the  Acca- 
demia  by,  72.  His  attitude  toward 
science,  223,  224.  His  method  of  ac- 
cepting scientific  conclusions,  ii,  201, 
202,  205.  Cited,  i,  224,  note;  ii,  207, 
note. 

Wiseman,  Sergeant-surgeon,  on  the  cure 
of  king's  evil,  ii,  47. 

Wiskemann,  cited,  ii,  273,  note. 

Witchcraft,  fear  of,  i,  3S3.  Unlimited 
torture  in  cases  of,  ii,  77,  118.  Ac- 
ceptance of  the  doctrines  of,  by  Prot- 
estants, 114,  115.  Last  famous  victim 
of  the  persecution  against,  121.  Aboli- 
tion of  the  crime  of,  by  act  of  Pailia- 
nwent,  126.  References  to,  in  the 
Bible,  135.  Epidemic  of.  in  New 
England,  145-154.  Mather's  book  on, 
146. 

Witches,  belief  in,  a  proof  of  a  lower 
stage  of  civilization,  i,  30S.  Their 
agency  in  causing  storms,  350-363. 
In  causing  pestilence,  ii,  72,  74-78,  85. 
In  causing  insanity,  117,  118.  In 
causing  diabolic  possession,  144,  148, 
156.  Persecution  of,  i,  351-354,  3°°. 
361  ;  ii,  74-78,  82,  117-121.  Oppo- 
nents of  the  witch  persecution  and 
their  work,  i,  354-360;  ii,  78,  119, 
122-125.  Dying  out  of  the  superstition, 
i.  362,  363  ;  ib  I23t  I24- 


INDEX. 


473 


Witch-Hammer,  the.  See  Malleus 
maleficarum . 

Witch  persecution,  i,  3S2-385  ;  ii,  74-7S, 
117-119,  143-154-    ' 

Witnesses,  the  three,  controversy  over 
the  passage  in  St.  John's  epistle  con- 
cerning, ii,  304,  305.  Rejection  of  the 
passage  by  Erasmus,  304.  By  New- 
ton, 310.    By  the  English  revisers,  387. 

Witsius,  his  attack  on  Le  Clerc,  ii,  321. 

Wittenberg,  figure  of  a  demon  in  the 
church  at,  ii,  116,  note. 

Wittenberg,  University  of,  its  attitude 
toward  the  Copernican  theory,  1,  128. 
Melanchthon's  lectures  on  physics  at, 

399- 

Wohlwill,  on  the  forgery  of  documents 
relating  to  Galileo,  i,  137,  note  ;  147, 
note. 

Wolf,  F.  A.,  his  influence  on  literary 
criticism,  ii,  339.     Cited,  341,  note. 

Wolf,  R.,  cited,  i,  174,  note  ;  176,  note  ; 
182,  note;  183,  note;  184,  note;  193, 
note  ;  194,  note  ;  201,  note  ;  204,  note  ; 
206,  note  ;  ii,  53,  note. 

Wolfius  (Wolf),  J.  C,  cited,  ii,  182,  note. 

Wolves,  distribution  of,  i,  45,  46.  Trans- 
formation of  men  into,  55  ;  ii,  113, 
114. 

Woman,  representation  of  the  creation 
of,  i,  24. 

Woman  with  seven  devils,  influence  of 
the  story  of,  on  belief  in  demoniacal 
possession,  ii,  115. 

Wonder-mongering,  its  influence  on  epi- 
demics of  mental  disease,  ii,  166. 

Wood,  Colonel,  his  discoveries  in  the  caves 
of  Great  Britain,  i,  276. 

Wood,  John,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Woodcock,  the,  as  an  illustration  of  the 
ends  of  Providence,  i,  42. 

Woodrow,  Dr.  James,  persecution  of,  i, 
84,  129,  168,  316-318;  ii,  259.  Cited, 
i,  322,  note. 

Woodward,  John,  his  views  on  fossils,  i, 
227. 

Wordsworth,  aesthetic  reaction  repre- 
sented by,  ii,  334. 

World,  the  reason  for  its  creation  in  six 
days,  i,  6.     Age  of,  8. 

Wormius,  his  attempt  to  prove  Danish 
the  primitive  speech,  ii,  184. 

Worms,  considered   superfluous  animals, 

i.  30- 

Worsaae,  his  investigation  of  the  shell- 
heaps  and  peat-beds  of  Scandinavia,  i, 
292,  293.  Of  the  prehistoric  remains 
of  Egypt,  298.  Cited,  287,  note  ;  294, 
note. 

Worthington,  on  the  infidelity  of  the 
modern  theory  of  fossils,  i,  230. 


Wotton,  E.,  his  scientific  work,  i,  41. 

Wright,  (  ..   I-'.,  cited,  280,  note. 

Wright,  T.,  cited,  i,  1;,,  note;  100,  note; 
ii,  in,  note. 

Writing,  origin  of,  ii,  204. 
Wucherfrage,  Die,  tiled,  ii,  273,  note. 

Wurtz,  his  defence  of  the  rights  of  scien- 
tific instructors,  i,  410. 

Wiirzburg,  Bishop  of,  Ids  persecution  of 
witches,  ii,  75. 

Wuttke,  cited,  ii,  39,  note  ;  44,  note. 

Wyclif,  Nider's  comparison  of  him  to  the 
ant,  i,  36. 

Wynn,  W.  II.,  cited,  i,  87,  note. 

Wytfliet  and  Magin,  cited,  ii,  11,  note. 

Xavier,  St.  Francis,  legends  of  his  mira- 
cles an  example  of  the  growth  of  le- 
gends of  healing,  ii,  5-22. 

Xavier,  La  Devotion  de  Dix  Vendredis 
a  V Honneur  de  St.  Francois,  cited,  ii, 
21,  note  ;   III,  note. 

Xelhua,  the  Pyramid  of  Cholula  built  by, 

ii.  173- 
Xenophanes,  on  fossils,  i,  227. 
Xivrey.     See  BERGER  de  Xivrey. 

Yahveh.     See  Jahveii,  Jehovah. 

Yale,  scientific  studies  at,  i,  78.  Preju- 
dice against  scientific  study  at,  i,  406. 
Headquarters  of  the  American  Orien- 
tal Society  at,  ii,  203. 

Ymago  Mundi,  the  great  work  of  Cardi- 
nal d'Ailly,  i,  107,  112. 

Ymir,  story  of  the  giant,  ii,  216. 

York,  Minster  of,  absence  of  any  monu- 
ment to  Tuke  in,  ii,  134. 

Youmans,  E.  L.,  his  work  in  advancing 
the  theory  of  evolution,  i,  69. 

Young,  his  study  of  Egyptian  monu- 
ments, i,  257. 

Yu,  supernatural  announcement  of  his 
birth,  i,  172. 

Zachary,  Pope,  his  condemnation  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  antipodes,  i,  105,  106. 
Result  of  his  efforts  to  crush  scientific 
thought,  109.     Cited,  106,  note. 

Zechariah.  book  of,  Bochart's  chapter  on 
the  six  horses  in,  i,  40.  Plague  threat- 
ened by,  ii,  68.     Cited,  6>,  note. 

Zeitschrift  fiir  deutsche  Culturgeschichte, 
cited,  i,  352,  note. 

Zelanda,  Cardinal,  his  approval  of  Lin- 
nseus's  teachings,  i,  <j:>. 

Zeller,  cited,  i,  375,  note  ;  39S,  note. 

Zem-Zem,  legend  of  the  fountain  of,  ii, 
209. 

Zend  Avesta,  light  thrown  upon  the  Bible 
by  study  of  the,  ii,  377,  378.  Cited,  i, 
374,  note  ;  ii,  73,  note  ;  37S,  note. 


474 


INDEX. 


Zephaniah,  his  mention  of  the  Dead  Sea, 
ii,  223. 

Zeus,  the  confusion  of  tongues  caused  by, 
ii,  173.     Effects  of  his  wrath,  214,  223. 

Zillner,  cited,  ii,  26g,  note. 

Ziinmermann,  cited,  ii,  141,  note. 

Zincke,  F.  Barham,  cited,  ii,  377,  note. 

Zingerle,  cited,  ii,  211,  note. 

Zipango,  its  distance  from  Europe,  i,  112. 

Zittel,  his  discovery  of  stone  implements 
in  the  Libyan  Desert,  i,  298. 

Zockler,  his  criticism  of  the  Bridgewater 
Treatises,  i,  44.  Cited,  10,  note  ;  44, 
note  ;  49,  note  ;  98,  note  ;  105,  note  ; 
no,  note  ;  112,  note  ;  148,  note  ;  155, 
note  ;  157,  note  ;  213,  note  ;  228,  note  ; 
236,  note  ;  237,  note  ;  240,  note  ;  ii, 
312,  note. 

Zoology,  theological  teachings  regarding, 
i,  24-49.  Rise  of  an  evolutionary  the- 
ory in,  49-88. 


Zoroaster,  temptation  of,  its  similarity  to 
the  story  of  the  temptation  of  Christ, 

ii,  377,  373- 

Zotenberg,  cited,  ii,  384,  note. 

Zugler,  on  the  futility  of  geological  ex- 
planations, i,  237. 

Zulus,  their  suspicions  regarding  the 
Old  Testament,  ii,  350. 

Zurich,  Lake  of,  remains  of  lake-dwell- 
ers found  in,  i,  294. 

Zvallart,  Jean,  on  the  wonders  of  the 
Dead  Sea  region,  ii,  237.  Cited,  241, 
note. 

Zwingli,  on  the  form  of  the  earth,  i,  97. 
His  views  on  comets,  182.  His  deniaL 
of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Hebrew 
vowel  points,  ii,  177.  Cited,  182, 
note. 

Zwinner,  his  account  of  Lot's  wife's 
statue,  ii,  241,  262.  Cited,  243, 
note. 


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"  It  is  not  every  Professor  of  Hebrew  whose  academical  lectures  would  furnish  forth 
3ueh  a  rich  feast  as  now  lies  before  us.  Even  the  happy  few  who  know  something  of  the 
facts  of  the  Bible  will  learn  much  from  the  felicitousness  of  the  present  exposition.  For 
Mr.  Robertson  Smith  is  not  only  a  '  full  man,'  but  has  a  singular  gift  of  making  a  hard 
subject  intelligible.  .  .  .  He  loves  to  blow  away  the  mists  of  controversy  and  show  the 
truth  in  all  its  attractive  simplicity." — T/ie  Academy, 

THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH.  Twelve  Lectures 
on  Biblical  Criticism,  with  Notes.  By  W.  Robertson*  Smith,  M.  A.,  recent- 
ly Professor  of  Hebrew  and  Exegesis  of  the  Old  Testament,  Free  Church 
College,  Aberdeen.     1  volume,  12mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

"  Speaking  after  mature  deliberation,  we  pronounce  Professor  Robertson  Smith's  book 
on  Biblical  Science  one  of  the  most  important  works  that  has  appeared  in  our  time.  It 
justifies,  in  a  convincing  and  conclusive  manner,  what  we  have  from  first  to  last  main- 
tained regarding  him — namely,  that  he  was  engaged  in  an  enterprise  auspicious  to  the 
Christian  Church  ;  that  he  was  not  assailing  the  faith,  but  fortifying  it.  He  has  not 
abandoned  one  jot  or  one  tittle  of  his  principles,  but  he  now  for  the  first  time  states 
them  comprehensively,  and  points  out  their  natural  and  logical  applications." — Christum 
World,  London. 

SCOTCH  SERMONS,   1880.     By  Principal  Caird  and  Others.      12iiio.     Cloth, 

$1.25. 

"  It  reveals  a  great  change  in  the  theological  sentiments  of  a  large  and  influential  sec- 
tion of  Calvinistic  and  Presbyterian  Scotland — a  wide  and  most  pronounced  departure 
from  the  opinions  of  their  forefathers.  Aside  altogether  from  the  opinions  which  it  ad- 
vocates, it  is  a  volume  of  great  ability.  With  scarcely  an  exception  the  Bermons  are 
models  of  pulpit  eloquence.  The  thought  is  vigorous  and  fresh,  and  the  language  is  clear, 
natural,  direct,  and  forceful." — New  York  Herald. 


P.  APPLETON   &   CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


THE 


HISTORICAL  REFERENCE-BOOK, 


COMPRISING 


A    Chronological    Table   of  Universal  History,    a    Chronological 
Dictionary  of  Universal  History,  a  Biographical  Dictionary. 

WITH    GEOGRAPHICAL    NOTES. 

FOR   TIIE    USE    OF    STUDENTS,    TEACHERS,    AND    READERS. 

By  LOUIS   HEILPRIN. 


Third  edition,  revised  and  brought  down  to  1892.    Crown  8vo. 
Half  leather,  $3.00. 


"  Quite  the  most  compact,  convenient,  accurate,  and  authoritative  work  of  the  kind 
in  the  language.  It  is  a  happy  combination  of  history,  biography,  and  geography,  and 
should  find  a  place  in  every  family  library,  as  well  as  at  the  elbow  of  every  scholar  and 
writer.  .  .  .  The  typography  remains  ideally  good  for  such  a  manual." — New  York  Even- 
ing Post. 

"  One  of  the  most  complete,  compact,  and  valuable  works  of  reference  yet  produced." 
—  Troy  Daily  Times. 

"  Unequaled  in  its  field." — Boston  Courier 

'•A  small  library  in  itself." — Chicago  Dial. 

"  An  invaluable  book  of  reference,  useful  alike  to  the  student  and  the  general  reader. 
The  arrangement  could  scarcely  be  better  or  more  convenient." — New  York  Herald. 

"  The  conspectus  of  the  world's  history  presented  in  the  first  part  of  the  book  is  as 
full  as  the  wisest  terseness  could  put  within  the  space." — Philadelphia  American. 

"  We  miss  hardly  anything  that  we  should  consider  desirable,  and  we  have  not  been 
able  to  detect  a  single  mistake  or  misprint." — New  York  Nation. 

"  So  far  as  we  have  tested  the  accuracy  of  the  present  work  we  have  found  it  without 
flaw." —  Christian  Union. 

"  The  conspicuous  merits  of  the  work  are  condensation  and  accuracy.  These  points 
alone  should  suffice  to  give  the  '  Historical  Reference-Book  '  a  place  in  every  public  and 
private  library." — Boston  Beacon. 

"The  method  of  the  tabulation  is  admirable  for  ready  reference." — New  York  Home 
Journal. 

"  This  cyclopaedia  of  condensed  knowledge  is  a  work  that  will  speedily  become  a  neces- 
sity to  the  general  reader  as  well  as  to  the  student." — Detroit  Free  Press. 

"  For  clearness,  correctness,  and  the  readiness  with  which  the  reader  can  find  the  in- 
formation of  which  he  is  in  search,  the  volume  is  far  in  advance  of  any  work  of  its  kind 
with  which  we  are  acquainted." — Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

"The  latest  dates  have  been  given.  The  geographical  notes  which  accompany  the  his- 
torical incidents  ar°  a  novel  addition,  and  exceedingly  helpful.  The  size  also  commends 
it,  making  it  convenient  for  constant  reference ;  while  the  three  divisions  and  careful 
elimination  of  minor  and  uninteresting  incidents  make  it  much  easier  to  find  dates  and 
events  about  which  accuracy  is  necessary.  Sir  William  Hamilton  avers  that  too  retentive 
a  memory  tends  to  hinder  the  development  of  the  judgment  by  presenting  too  much  for 
decision.  A  work  like  this  is  thus  better  than  memory.  It  is  a  '  mental  larder  '  which 
needs  no  care,  and  whose  contents  are  ever  available." — New  York  University  Quarterly. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


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